The Ministry of Economic Development asks not to allow airline deficit in the summer. "The intervention of the authorities will increase prices" - aviation expert

Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov at a meeting of the Government Commission for Tourism Development asked the Ministry of Transport to warn the possible lack of places in aircraft in the tourist season.

“It is important to warn the situation with the lack of the number of places in aviation. While we see the forecasts of the Ministry of Transport, a decrease in the freight container on internal airlines, so we ask. This happens, but the Ministry of Transport then quickly adds. Therefore, we ask the Ministry of Transport to pay attention to this so that our dynamics of internal flights does not lag behind the dynamics in external flights, ”TASS quotes Reshetnikova. In addition, Reshetnikov invited the Ministry of Transport to concentrate on “maintaining in normal condition” of roads, which is necessary for the development of road tourism in the conditions of high loading of trains and aircraft.

The aviation expert, who agreed to talk with The Insider on anonymity, said that the government’s interference in the operation of the aircraft industry can only increase ticket prices:

The main reason that the minister made such a warning and such a request is that freight containers continue to contract in Russia, i.e., the number of aircraft. It is also impossible not to note the wear of the fleet.

According to open sources, in 2024, Russian airlines disabled 58 aircraft, and brought about 28 sanctions bypassing the situation. New domestic aircraft in the airline still do not receive, and if they start, it is not earlier than 2026-2027, and passengers should be carried now.

The Ministry of Economic Development expects the tourist flow to grow in the summer of 2025 by 8.1% compared to 2024. At the same time, the Ministry of Transport predicts a decrease in the freight capacity on internal airlines. In this regard, the Ministry of Economic Development asks that the dynamics on internal flights does not lag behind the dynamics on the external ones. In addition, the authorities are interested in the fact that the money remains within the country.

Since there are no aircraft and they will not appear from the air, we are talking about the redistribution of security capacities from international directions to internal ones. However, such an intervention of the state will lead to an even greater increase in the cost of tickets. The fact is that for domestic airlines, international flights are more profitable than the majority of internal ones, and income lost from reducing the number of flights abroad, the company to lay in prices for tickets for internal flights. Yes, and due to the reduction of freight capacities on external flights, the price of tickets for them will increase, because passengers will not go anywhere, and there will be fewer aircraft.

As it became known earlier, the Kazan Aviation Plant named after S.P. Gorbunov, which is part of the structure of Rostec, will not be able to fulfill the planned supply of four Central Semagistral aircraft Tu-214 until the end of 2025, the resources will be enough to assemble only one aircraft. This is not the first breakdown of plans in Russian civil aviation after the outbreak of war: in February, Kommersant found out that the authorities plan to freeze the project of creating a light multi-purpose turboprop aircraft “Baikal”, which was supposed to replace the outdated An-2 corn, designed back in 1947, and in 2024, the heads of three large large-large schedules were fired at once at once. aircraft factories.