“I lost the vacation I saved all year for!”

More and more posts and videos are appearing on social networks about how Russians spend hours (and even days) at airports waiting for departure.

On June 16, after another attack by Ukrainian drones on the Krasnodar region, a collapse occurred at Krasnodar airport. A drone threat regime was declared in the region and civil aviation flights were stopped. Huge queues lined up at the boarding gates at Krasnodar airport. Passengers with tired and crying children sat on the floor waiting for information from airlines for hours.

A video of a resident of Tyumen (the journalists did not name her name) circulated in the media about how she was unable to fly out of Sochi for 14 hours: “The worst thing is, you don’t understand what will happen next. Some people live here for days and sleep. Poor children. I <...> go nuts. I have tears in my eyes! People live, sleep, eat on the floor.”

Outraged Russians have been sharing similar stories on social networks for several years now. But it was in 2026, when Ukrainian Armed Forces drones attacked Russian territory more often than before, that there were noticeably more posts about problems with flights - especially during the January and May holidays and June, when Russians were flying on vacation.

“The situation no longer looks just strange, but critical,” Anna, a blogger from Krasnodar, who was flying to Yerevan, was indignant in January. — Planes [are canceled] without explanation. This is chaos in which thousands of people are stuck, including my mother.”

“No communication, no mobile Internet, no understanding of what will happen next. Just how to live in such conditions? - complained the interlocutor of the Krasnodar online publication 93.ru. Her flight from Krasnodar to Moscow was postponed from May 8 to May 9. Knowing that increased security measures would be in place in the capital on Victory Day, she decided not to risk it and bought a bus ticket. Travel time was about 17 hours.

“The haters will say: you knew what the situation was like there. But I needed to go south,” wrote Victoria, a resident of Norilsk, on her Instagram. At the beginning of June, she was going to relax with her two children in Gelendzhik. According to Victoria, the flight was rescheduled “every 30 minutes”; it took off only three hours later: “It seemed like it would never end. It was one of the hardest trips of my life."

“We woke up at three in the morning so that, happy, we could fly with our daughter to Sochi,” Katerina, who in mid-June wanted to fly from Moscow on vacation to the Black Sea coast, said on her Instagram. First, their flight was first postponed by two hours, then by another 12. Two hours before the new departure time, it was completely canceled. In the caption for the video, Katerina added that she could not buy tickets for the next day because she did not have the money for it. “I lost the vacation that I took specifically for this trip. I saved for it all year!” - Katerina complained.

Because of the Carpet plan, planes can circle the airport for hours - and then land in another city. From there passengers have to travel by land

In November 2023, the press service of the Federal Air Transport Agency launched a Telegram channel specifically to inform Russians about the “introduction of temporary restrictions” at airports across the country due to attacks by Ukrainian drones.

Since then, more than two thousand posts have been published in the channel, differing only in the names of the cities - they appear literally every hour. “Temporary restrictions” usually cover several airports and dozens or even hundreds of flights at once.

A memo for passengers published on the Sochi Airport telegram channel states that “the situation changes every minute,” so it is impossible to predict when restrictions will be lifted. Sometimes the airport is opened for a short time, but flights are immediately suspended again. This happened, for example, in early June: then in three days the airport operated for only eight minutes.

Bereg spoke with Victoria, who in early June flew with two children from Norilsk to Gelendzhik with refueling in Moscow. There were no problems with the flight to the capital, but getting to the final point turned out to be extremely difficult.

According to Victoria, the flight in Moscow was postponed five or six times. Three hours later, passengers were finally allowed on board. “We flew, but didn’t reach it, we started circling,” says a resident of Norilsk. The pilot informed the passengers that an unmanned danger regime had been declared in Gelendzhik: if it was not canceled soon, they would have to land at another airport.

It was already 20 o'clock when Victoria's family took off from Norilsk. “Tired children cried and asked when we would arrive. At first it was just sad, and then it became scary. Because of drones and this whole situation in general. It was emotionally difficult even for me, an adult,” recalls Bereg’s interlocutor.

The plane circled near Gelendzhik for two hours and eventually landed in Mineralnye Vody. The crew asked passengers to pick up their luggage and contact a representative of the NordStar airline on whose flight they were flying to find out what to do next.

“We did so, but there was no representative anywhere,” says Victoria. “Only over the public address system in the airport building we were informed that we could get some water at the [airline] counter.”

Between Minvody and Gelendzhik there are more than 500 kilometers. According to Victoria, at first the passengers expected that they would at least be accommodated in a hotel. Then someone managed to get through to NordStar and said that buses were coming for them and would take everyone to Gelendzhik.

“The kids are exhausted, I’m exhausted, we’re hungry, and we were only given a half-liter bottle of water. We boarded the bus and learned that we would be traveling for about ten hours. I decided that no, we won’t go,” says Victoria. She and her children spent the night at a hotel in Minvody.

Victoria could get from Mineralnye Vody to Gelendzhik by train. This is exactly what the Ministry of Transport is calling for - to relieve congestion at airports. With a transfer in Novorossiysk, the journey would have taken Berega’s interlocutor approximately 11 hours. The train from Mineralnye Vody runs every two days. Having learned about this, Victoria decided that she was not ready to spend even more time, and went to her relatives in Rostov-on-Don:

So we didn’t get to Gelendzhik this year. And there is no desire - the situation in the south is very tense.

Because of the war and the collapse in the aviation industry, everyone is suffering losses - idle airports, tour operators, and the hotel business

In Gelendzhik, Victoria planned to rent a house and even made an advance payment for one day’s stay. This money was not returned to her. “Bereg’s” interlocutor does not complain and even sympathizes with the hotel business: “It’s a shame for the landlord. He will not receive the money due to the cancellation of the reservation.”

Due to the collapse at southern airports, both private lessors and tour operators are losing profits. The Russian representative of one of the largest international travel agencies, Anex Tour, Yana Muromova, told the industry publication Profi.Travel that the losses of one travel company this summer could reach 100 thousand dollars a day: tourists who do not fly out on time must be accommodated in a hotel and provided with food.

“Sadness, melancholy, despondency... There are no active sales, people are hiding,” Profi.Travel quotes travel agents. In their opinion, the situation in the tourism industry was worse only during the coronavirus pandemic. Amid the crisis, hotels are significantly reducing prices, but even this does not help attract guests.

“This year will be very difficult for the hotel market. Perhaps for the first time we are seeing a scenario in which a certain number of facilities will simply close,” says Vadim Prasov, vice-president of the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers.

Surveys conducted among travel agents show that their clients are increasingly saving on travel. Russians are reducing the length of their vacations, looking for more budget-friendly tour options, and going on vacation less often than before. Those who previously turned to tour operators twice a year can now afford only one trip.

“The expectations of all [travel agencies] are indeed alarming. The trend towards saving has been observed for several years, but now it seems that tourists are tightening their belts more and more,” the owner of one of the Russian travel agencies complained to Profi.Travel.

With flight delays and cancellations, traveling south can actually get quite expensive. The general director of the Sochi tour operator TBK Aelita, Alexandra Serdyuchenko, told the story of a tourist from Yerevan - an elderly man in a wheelchair who came to a Sochi sanatorium for rehabilitation.

The tourist was unable to fly home on time due to the flight cancellation; he had to stay in Sochi for a few more days. To pay for room and board, he was forced to borrow money from relatives in Yerevan. “It was not easy to send money due to the fact that foreign cards do not work in Russia,” Serdyuchenko added.

In an attempt to avoid unnecessary expenses on unplanned accommodation of tourists, many tour operators themselves dissuade clients from traveling. This is what, for example, Moscow travel agents did on the eve of the May holidays, with whom Profi.Travel spoke.

“They [clients] don’t need unnecessary stress and a ruined vacation, and we don’t need the same. I don’t want hassle, sleepless nights wondering when the flight will take off, whether they will be accommodated in a hotel while waiting, what compensation will be for lost days of rest,” one of the Russian travel agencies told reporters.

Idle airports are also complaining about losses. For example, the airport in Elista, which was closed in February 2022, resumed operations only in May 2024. Downtime of 800 days cost the country's budget more than 134 million rubles, allocated as state subsidies. And to support the Krasnodar airport, closed from February 24, 2022 to September 2025, the authorities allocated a subsidy in the amount of 1.5 billion rubles.

General Director of the tour operator Space Travel and Vice President of the Association of Tour Operators of Russia Artur Muradyan fears that “this is not yet the peak of the difficulties” that entrepreneurs from the tourism industry will face.

The fuel crisis has affected the south, and given the current geopolitical turbulence and the lack of working defense mechanisms, an even deeper test of strength awaits us. And, unfortunately, the industry’s readiness for it is minimal.

Shortly before the start of the war, the Russian aviation industry was setting records. Now it’s breaking anti-records

In 2021, a record number of passengers passed through Gelendzhik Airport - more than a million. At the beginning of 2022, thanks to the launch of a new airport terminal, passenger traffic in the city could double, wrote the aviation business media outlet Air Transport Review. However, in 2025, only about 80 thousand passengers passed through Gelendzhik airport.

Also in 2021, Aeroflot entered the top 3 most punctual air carriers in the world. In 2026, punctuality in the airline industry is measured by the number of flights that manage to depart at all. For example, in 2025, only every third plane departed from Vnukovo on schedule.

Russian passengers have to wait for hours not only for the flight, but also for a response from the airline’s support service. Victor (name changed) told Bereg that he spent three hours on the Aeroflot hotline. On the flight of this airline, Victor and his girlfriend were supposed to fly on the night of June 15 from Sochi to Ufa.

At first, the flight was postponed 10 and a half hours - to the morning. Victor was not happy with the flight: he had to work at that time. Then he tried to call Aeroflot to exchange tickets. “I was transferred from one operator to another for an hour. And then the call ended,” says the Ufa resident. “I called again - and again for an hour.”

Finally, the hotline operator announced that she had rescheduled the flight, but Victor did not receive any confirmation. Therefore, I had to call Aeroflot a third time: “We were already freaking out!” But we found a decent guy who helped us arrange new tickets.”

By the right time, Victor and his girlfriend arrived at the airport, but this flight was also postponed - first for three hours, then for another eight. Aeroflot promised to accommodate passengers in a hotel. “The fuss began, no one understood anything,” says the Ufa resident.

Passengers were brought to the two-star boarding house "Aquamarine" at 6:30 in the morning. They were checked in for an hour, and at 9:00 the bus went back to the airport. There the Ufa residents discovered that the plane had been delayed again - this time for three hours.

“We really wanted to go home, but it was simply impossible,” complains Victor. — The train ride takes two days and eight hours. We were ready to pay 40 thousand for an intercity taxi just to avoid sitting at the airport. But it would take more than a day to travel.”

In official statements, the authorities strongly avoid the words “cancellation” and “postponement” of flights. Now this is called "schedule adjustment"

When discussing what is happening in the aviation industry, government officials traditionally choose streamlined language. For example, the Ministry of Transport calls the cancellation and rescheduling of flights “reduced flight frequency.” And when Ukrainian drones attacked the administrative building of the Air Navigation of the South of Russia, the agency announced “temporarily adjusted work of the regional center.” “Schedule adjustment” can refer to either the postponement of a flight by 10 hours or its cancellation.

Bereg's interlocutor Maxim had to “adjust” his own schedule for almost a day. On May 8, Ukrainian drones attacked the air navigation center in Rostov-on-Don, which caused 13 airports in southern Russia to cease operating normally. That day, Maxim and his wife were planning to fly from Adler to Yerevan to celebrate their wedding anniversary there.

First, the flight's departure was delayed for six hours, then information appeared that air traffic would not be restored in the next three days. First of all, passengers were given mats to make it more comfortable to sit and lie on the floor. And then at the Aeroflot desk people were informed that they would be provided with meals and checked into a hotel.

Having reached the hotel by bus, the passengers learned that the airline was unable to negotiate accommodations with the hotel. Then people contacted representatives of Aeroflot, and they were checked into another hotel. By the end of the day, air service was restored, and Maxim and his wife flew to Yerevan. “It was a very unpleasant situation, and I’m glad that we flew away at all,” says Bereg’s interlocutor. “But there is something to remember.”

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Despite all the difficulties for workers in the Russian tourism industry and their clients, the head of the Ministry of Transport, Andrei Nikitin, speaks with optimism about the plans that his department wants to implement by 2050. For example, the Ministry of Transport “intends to increase the number of international destinations from Krasnodar” and will “with pleasure” buy domestic aircraft “as soon as their colleagues produce them.”

Nikitin characterizes the situation with air transportation, which even pro-government media call a “collapse,” as “certain restrictions”:

Please note that the “carpets” have become easier to carry than before. I suggested to my colleagues that we treat airport closures as an unpleasant routine and look at how we can make the situation easier for passengers. For example, make drinking water fountains.

"Shore"