Vladimir Putin had a working meeting with General Director of Aeroflot Russian Airlines Vitaly Savelyev to discuss the company’s performance in 2015 and the situation on the air service market.
Vladimir Putin had a working meeting with General Director of Aeroflot Russian Airlines Vitaly Savelyev to discuss the company’s performance in 2015 and the situation on the air service market.
Putin asked him about Russian low-coster, the company with low rates. Vitaly Savelyev said: «We have a project that you approved, our low-cost airline project that I would like to say a few words about. As you may remember, after the sanctions were introduced, the Dobrolet project was frozen – we were not allowed to fly. However, in the two months of operation, we saw there was a demand and we knew this project was efficient. Laws were passed with your help, thank you, that made it possible, among other things, to introduce non-refundable rates the low-coster uses. We did not wait for the sanctions to be lifted and launched the project under the new name of Pobeda».
This was in December of 2014, and by December 2015 Pobeda carried 3 million passengers. The project proved a success.
Savelyev suggests other airlines follow suit because Aeroflot is no monopoly here either, though the niche turned out to be very lucky.
According to his words now Pobeda has 12 aircraft and is launching its first international flights, and flights to Kaliningrad, though domestic flights are its priority. «Importantly, we do not fly only from Moscow: we have quite a few direct flights from Yekaterinburg and other cities to Sochi and other places, in other words, we are distributing the flow», he stressed.
