Russian antitrust catches airlines changing fees manually

MOSCOW, Jan 31 (PRIME) – Russian airlines set fees manually and the Federal Antimonopoly Service will work to change this to push the prices down, head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemyev told the Federation Council on Wednesday.

“We are now completing wide-scale work which should help us a lot. In particular, we’ve been talking about the use of electronic price setting systems. All the airlines, both Aeroflot and others, say that it is the machines that set prices in an automated regime depending on rising demand,” he said.

“We have discovered that these are not the machines, this is done by algorithms manually. No robot is behind this, as they say, but people guided by a very abstract picture of demand rising by unclear figures. I think that this is unfounded.”

In accordance with a recent order of President Vladimir Putin, the antimonopoly service requested information about price formation and sales of plane tickets from major Russian airlines.

“We will try together with the airlines -- so far in a soft regime -- to change the algorithms and not to allow unsanctioned manual interference connected with price rises which are based on a higher demand unsupported by serious proof,” Artemyev said.

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