RUSSIA: Russia's first budget airline take to the skies
- 00:00:39
- ITN Source
RUSSIA: Russia's first budget airline take to the skies
Russia opens its skies to budget travel, and promises safety at low prices. Russia's first budget airline SkyExpress carried out its first flight on Monday (January 29) and promised safety at low prices -- a rare combination in Russia's ailing civil aviation. Russian airlines are notorious for their poor safety standards, especially on domestic flights. Last year two Russian-operated planes crashed killing almost 300 people. Air travel safety was in the news again on Monday when a Russian airplane made an emergency landing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport after one of its engines caught fire, officials and media said. None of the 60 passengers and crew were hurt, an airport spokeswoman said. "The health of every (air) company is determined by its safety. Therefore I wish this company safe flights," said a representative of Russia's national aviation authorities, Yuri Tsybin. SkyExpress CEO Marina Bukalova said the company's main goal for this year was to obtain international safety certification, IOSA, so far awarded only to Russia's flagship carrier Aeroflot. The new carrier has attracted foreign investment, with the European Bank for econstruction and Development (EBRD) buying a 20 percent equity stake in SkyExpress. "An essential part of the transportation sector ... was so far missing," Florence Bachelard-Bakal, a senior EBRD banker, told Reuters. "Russia has seen quite a lot of consolidation but the low-cost model was so far not present." Speakers at the public launch of SkyExpress at Moscow's Vnukovo airport said the carrier's low-price policy would make air travel available to a much larger proportion of the Russian population. "Population mobility is the most significant feature of a country's economic development," said a top official in the ministry of economic development, Igor Konkov. A colourful Boeing-737 airplane, on the first SkyExpress flight, headed for Russia's Black Sea city of Sochi. By the end of the year, the company aims to fly regularly to 11 Russian cities within 800 km (500 miles) to 3,000 km of Moscow. "My friends invited me," said Konstantin Ershov, 20, queuing to check in for the flight, adding he had paid only 500 roubles ($19) for his ticket. "This is really cheap ... At first I thought it was a joke."
ITN Source | January 29, 2007
