Sheremetyevo remains Moscow’s only growing airport

Development of Aeroflot, Sheremetyevo’s base airline is one of the airport’s key success factors (Photo by Leonid Faerberg / Transport-Photo.com)

At the end of 2016 Sheremetyevo became the only Moscow airport that posted traffic growth. Its traffic grew 7.6% to 34.03 million passengers. Its piers Domodedovo and Vnukovo, in line with the forecast, saw their traffic decline by 6.6% to 28.5 million passengers and 11.8% to 13.947 million passengers, respectively.

Being the only growing airport in Moscow, Sheremetyevo increased its share in the Russian capital’s cumulative traffic. It now exceeds 44%, up from 40.3% last year. Growth was recorded for both domestic and international traffic. The number of passengers traveling inside Russia increased 9.8% to 15.168 million, international traffic grew 5.9% to 18.863 million passengers.

Development of Aeroflot, Sheremetyevo’s base airline, was the key factor behind the airport’s success. Other major contributors were Russian NordWind and Royal Flight, as well as Air France, Air Astana and Alitalia. Several new carriers launched operations from Sheremetyevo last year – Air Malta, China’s Tianjin Airlines, Tunisair and Nouvelair from Tunisia. The airport specifically pointed to fast growing traffic on routes from china.

Domodedovo’s domestic traffic remained level with 2015, 16.6 million passengers. However it international traffic plunged 14.9% to 11.88 million passengers.

By contrast, Vnukovo saw its domestic traffic grow 10% to 10.473 million passengers, whereas its international traffic halved compared to last year, to 3.474 million passengers. The airport was severy affected by its base carrier Transaero leaving the market. Although Aeroflot’s subsidiary Rossiya developed a flight program from Vnukovo and even became its largest traffic generator, this could not offset loss of Transaero.

St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo is catching up with Vnukovo. Last year it handled 13.2 million passengers, and although its traffic slid 1.7% compared to 2015, the decline wasn’t as steep at Vnukovo.

In 2016 a new Zhukovsky airport became operational in Moscow area. At the end of last year it handled 53,000 passengers.