March 15, 2015, 21:31 / Business

Surgut airport does not allow Pobeda to enter

Aeroflot low-cost airline cannot receive a response from Surgut Airport regarding new slots Maria Kiseleva

Aeroflot's low-cost airline Pobeda accused Surgut airport of not providing slots (the right to service at a certain time) for flights Surgut - Anapa, Surgut - Sochi, defending the interests of UTair airline . The company's general director Andrei Kalmykov announced this on his Twitter microblog on Thursday evening. “Surgut Airport does not give us slots for flights Surgut - Anapa and Surgut - Sochi, openly declaring its reluctance to have a competitor for UTair,” he wrote.

On February 20, Pobeda requested slots from Surgut Airport to operate flights to Sochi and Anapa, but did not receive a response, a company representative said. Pobeda wanted to fly from Surgut to Anapa on Mondays from May 25 to September 14, and to Sochi on Wednesdays and Sundays from May 27 to September 13. Pobeda opened sales of summer tickets for flights to Anapa, Sochi and Genedzhik from Moscow on March 6. It was not possible to contact a representative of Surgut Airport. A UTair representative declined to comment.

Based on the schedule, UTair operates three flights a week from Surgut to Sochi and Anapa in the summer. According to SPARK-Interfax, UTair owns 26% of the Surgut airport, 30% belongs to Gazprom Transgaz Surgut, and another 19% belongs to the property department of the city of Surgut. The mayor of Surgut, Dmitry Popov, said on Friday that the airport’s refusal to provide slots to Pobeda was not related to protecting the interests of the base carrier (his words were reported by Interfax).

The representative of Pobeda did not specify at what time the departure of the Surgut-Anapa and Surgut-Sochi flights was planned. The head of the analytical department of the industry agency "Airport" Oleg Panteleev notes that at regional airports slots for the morning and evening are always the most popular; other airlines are not so interested. At the same time, now from 6.30 am to 8 am, UTair operates five flights from Surgut airport (two of them are UTair Express and one is Aeroflot). At the same time, based on the technical characteristics of the airport, it can only produce two 1st and 2nd class aircraft per hour. If Pobeda asked for slots specifically at a convenient time in the morning, then it is quite possible that the lack of response was due to technical reasons, the expert believes.

At the end of January, Pobeda appealed to the Federal Antimonopoly Service with a complaint about the refusal of Surgut Airport to provide a second slot on Moscow-Surgut-Moscow flights. A source in Pobeda explained that the complaint was not satisfied. However, later Surgut Airport, in response to a repeated request, provided the required slot. Such conflicts date back to the 2000s, when strong regional airlines had shares in airports and could dictate their policies to them, notes independent aviation expert, HSE researcher Andrei Kramarenko. A similar situation arose, for example, at the Krasnoyarsk airport, which protected the interests of Krasair, or at the Kazan airport, in which the Tatarstan airline had an advantage. On domestic flights, UTair in this sense can be considered as a regional carrier that has a strong position at Surgut airport, the expert says. At the same time, he notes that flights to resort cities from the northern regions have always been profitable and the fight for them is important for UTair, which is in a difficult financial situation.