Discounting of air flows

The price of air tickets subsidized by the state will depend on the age of the passenger, students and pensioners of the Far East will receive a 50 percent discount on flights to Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi. This was stated on Thursday by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev during a working trip in Transbaikal.

According to the president, "the decision, in fact, has been agreed and adopted." “The point is that citizens aged 12 to 23 years, that is, youth - schoolchildren and students, had the right to such tickets. And residents over 60 years old, that is, pensioners, ”the head of state said.

Commenting on the words of the president, the head of the Ministry of Transport, Igor Levitin, explained on Thursday to reporters that in 2009 the government plans to issue subsidized flights for flights from the distant regions of the country to the central part of the Russian Federation 120 thousand people.

“The government is being developed by subsidizing aviation transportation from the Far East and vice versa,” the minister said. “The amount of compensation is now being considered, and negotiations are underway with airlines about the cost of the ticket that will be announced.”

According to Igor Levitin, for each region, the share of compensation will be different depending on the distance. “But up to about 50%,” the head of the Ministry of Transport confirmed the words of the president. “In the near future, the government will make a resolution on this, the government order will be released,” Levitin said.

The allocation of preferential categories of citizens has become an innovation in the state project to subside air transportation from the Far East to the central regions of the country. Until the last moment, it was about highlighting subsidies to the entire economy class, regardless of age, status and other distinctive characteristics of the passenger. As the press secretary of the Ministry of Transport Timur Hikmatov explained on Thursday on Thursday, we were talking about the need to choose a certain tariff of the economic class, which will apply to the subsidy. “Apparently, the government decided to revise this issue, but the resolution has not yet been released, so it is not yet known exactly what edits have been introduced,” Hikmatov said.

Recall that for the first time the issue of the high cost of tickets was raised a year ago - in February 2008. During the meeting on the development of the Far East in Khabarovsk, Igor Levitin and then the first Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev decided that the price of a ticket to this region from Moscow should drop to 10-15 thousand rubles.

This was to be achieved at the expense of subsidies to air carriers for fuel and subsidies to maintain airport infrastructure in the Far East. In January 2009, Igor Levitin, at a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said that the Ministry of Transport is ready to assume to ensure subsidizing transportation. In this regard, in February, a competition should be held among airlines for preferential transportation to the Far East.

It was planned to allocate 2.5 billion rubles in 2009 by the prime minister of Putin to submit air transportation according to the old scheme, and in 2010 - 5 billion rubles. The new concept, according to the unanimous opinion of experts, will not require large funds.

So, according to Boris Rybak, the General Director of the InfoMost, "the average economic class tariff for the Far East fell below the limit, which was talked about a year ago taking into account subsidies. Today the ticket can be bought for 14-15 thousand rubles. So such significant amounts will not be. It would be wiser than the government allocated to support operating activities of airlines."

02/19/2009 / Ekaterina Sorokoy material published in the newspaper No. 30 dated 02.20.2009.