Russia airlines round-up: the World's most stylish cabin crew and more...

                                                                                     Picture: Aeroflot

I already had the chance to mention how much do I like Aeroflot's website design and aircraft livery, now, Skyscanner's users have added another item to add to the list: Aeroflot has the most stylish uniforms in the airline industry...Who would have said just 20 years ago!

And, finally, some good news for Sukhoi's Superjet! Mexican airline Interjet is going ahead with its purchase of 20 Superjets. They will replace A320s on domestic routes. And this happens on the same week Sukhoi is delivering its first Superjet in Indonesia, this honour goes to Sky Aviation...The reverse of the coin, however, is that the $900M. deal in Indonesia with Kartika Airlines is not going to materialize, on this occasion it has actually been Sukhoi that pulled out of the deal because, apparently, the Indonesian airline could not fulfill its financial requirements...

 Some time ago I analyzed why low cost carriers have it so hard in Russia...RBC magazine has also been looking into this matter and published an interesting report (an English summary is available here)...the conclusion: Russia's best chance to get its own low cost airline is...Aeroflot! It actually makes a lot of sense if you see what flag carriers are doing all over Western Europe: Iberia Express (or maybe Vueling instead?), Air France's Hop (I can't resist calling it "Hope") or Lufthansa's Germanwings rebranding...why wait until you are against the wall if you can have first mover advantage and have time to learn the game?

Last but not least, if you are a pilot looking for a new challenge this one is for you: Russia its planning to lift its ban on foreign pilots as a result of a the pilot shortage Russian airlines are currently facing.

Russia Airlines round up: the last Tu-154, Superjets grounded and more...

Today the top slot goes to a classic of aviation...

I was quite amazed when I read the story on Ria Novosti's site, but, yes! while most airlines, including Russia's, were busy getting rid of the iconic Soviet-era airliner, deep inside Russia there was still a factory churning out Tu-154s. It was, because today has rolled out the last of them putting an end to 45 years of production!

(note: the aircraft in the picture is not the last of the line, but a Kirgyzstan Airways TU-154M that I spotted at Domodedovo airport a few years ago. But you can find a great Tu-154 infographic here!)

Although for many is already a vintage souvenir, if you waish to fly on a Tu-154, there are still plenty of options around, among them North Korea's flag carrier, that it recently launched an online booking service!

The Tu-154 might have its issues, but being around for 45 years is quiet an achievement for a piece of technology. It was expected that the type of shortcomings that led most of the airlines of the former Eastern block to ditch their old Soviet models as soon as they had a chance would be overcome by the new darling of the Russian civilian aerospace industry, the Sukhoi Superjet, however, as already commented in the previous round-up, the Superjet seems to be experimenting serious reliability issues, this time, the whole Aeroflot Superjet fleet has been grounded. But to be fair, this is not exclusive of Russian airliners, just ask Boeing about its 787s!

On a totally separate page, UTair is considering an IPO. The English story I linked to is to a premium source, but if you can read Russian, here is a longer article about the matter. While UTair might not be very well known to the non-Russian public, it has quite a large domestic operation, with a strong focus in oil producing areas of Siberia. It also operates a helicopter fleet, something quite unusual for major airlines in the West, but not that rare in Russia!

And European low cost airlines are finally coming to Russia!...or maybe not (yet)...as there seem to be some problems with Easyjet's documentation, that has not been able to confirm the start of flights despite having (apparently) sorted out operational and administrative issues and started selling tickets on its new cherished Moscow routes...In any case, Easyjet is expected to be followed soon by another European LCC, Wizzair. Are we going to see Ryanair in Russia soon?

Russian airlines round-up (8/2/13): Superjet's reliability, Aeroflot posters and more...

Some interesting news this week about Russia's two main civilian airliner programmes. While Irkut's MS-21 continues to make progress, the first major fuselage section has been assembled, Sukhoi's Superjet is again under suspicion. According to this article (in Russian) Aeroflot is not particularly happy with the Superjet's reliability: this aircraft type makes 8% of Aeroflot's fleet, but is responsible for 40% of technical incidents!

 At least it looks great!

An aircraft the Russian flag carrier can count on from now on is the Boeing 777-300ER, that has finally entered service this week on the route between Moscow (Sheremetyevo) and Bangkok. Aeroflot has finally become the third triple-seven operator in Russia, after Transaero and Orenair, although it does so after a number of administrative issues that have delayed the aircraft's entry into service. Every day of delay causes the airline a loss of $50,000, so now Aeroflot wants to sue the aviation authorities asking for compensation.

By the way, still in relation to Aeroflot: if Aeroflot's 90th anniversary was featured on the latest "Russia airlines round-up", today I could not avoid sharing this collection of downloadable posters about Aeroflot's history that is available on the Russian language version of the airline's website!

Also in the news this week was the liberalisation of air traffic rights between Moscow and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. An important route in the post-Soviet space that now sees around 14 flights a day, operated by 5 different airlines.

And talking about regulations: a number of incidents sparked by drunken passengers on Russian aircraft have raised concerns about alcohol abuse during flights, to the point that the Russian authorities are considering tightening in-flight alcohol sale regulations, even for duty-free items. As you might imagine, the industry is not too happy about it...

And last but not least...have you seen how Moscow Vnukovo airport new terminal look like? Vnukovo is here. Barcelona, here. Spot the differences!

The Russian airlines update

 Easyjet, soon in Russia, but not without some business model changes

The first (and so far, pretty much, only) attempt to establish domestic low cost airlines in Russia failed last year when Avianova and Sky Express went bankrupt. What you possibly didn't know is that the latter was folded into Kuban Airlines (despite Russia's and, previously, Soviet Union's historical links with the Caribbean island, the airline's name has nothing to do with Cuba, it refers to the Kuban region of Southern Russia instead!)...well, Kuban airlines now ceases operations too. Not that it was a major player, but with a fleet of only seven aircraft it fell short of new regulatory requirements that put minimum fleet size at eight aircraft.

Regulation is actually one of the factors that has been hampering the development of a low cost airline industry in Russia (for a more detailed analysis see this article, it's nearly two years old, but  still valid).

Among the airline regulations that are somehow unique to Russia is the requirement that all airline tickets must be refundable. Although there is currently a project to make this requirement more flexible, it is estimated that  Russian airlines lose 8% of income due to last minute cancellations, something that other travelers end up paying for in higher fares (an estimation outs this "surcharge" at 22.7B. rubles per year, or in excess of $730M.).

This is something that Easyjet has had to comply with as it prepares to start flights to Russia (after winning a pitched battle against Virgin Atlantic for the right to operate this route following BMI's, the only British operator flying to Russia, acquisition by British Airways). Russia will be the only country in its network where the low cost carrier will sell refundable tickets.

Regulatory and operational complexity is not something low cost carriers like (even if Easyjet or Air Berlin are ready to comply in order to get access to a large non-saturated market), however I am trying to figure out, for a second, Ryanair negotiating exemptions with the Russian regulator and I have got the feeling that a truly developed low cost air travel market is still some way off in Russia...!