Red Wings has opened a fourth regional base for its Superjet 100 aircraft, a company spokesman said on December 6. It will be located in Omsk. Today SSJ 100 aircraft of Red Wings airline are based at the Yekaterinburg Koltsovo airport (four SSJ 100) and Chelyabinsk (one SSJ 100). Two more Superjets of the company are based at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
“Red Wings will become the first base airline at Omsk Airport. The first aircraft based at the airport is the regional airliner SSJ-100. It will fly from Moscow to Omsk in late December-early January immediately after it arrives from the manufacturing plant, completion of technical acceptance and entering into the Red Wings operator’s certificate, “a representative of the carrier told Vedomosti. He clarified that from January 2022 the company will operate flights on seven subsidized routes from Omsk – to Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kazan, Makhachkala, Novokuznetsk, Samara and Ufa.
“In the spring-summer schedule of 2022 [планируется запустить рейсы] to Volgograd, Kemerovo, Mineralnye Vody, Perm, Simferopol, Sochi, Chelyabinsk, ”he added. This season Red Wings flies from Omsk in three directions – to Yekaterinburg, Mirny and Noyabrsk.
The general director of Red Wings Evgeny Klyucharev, whose words are quoted in the release, added that the airline also plans to open its branch in Omsk, where some of the pilots and flight attendants will be employed.
The passenger traffic of the Omsk airport in 2019 amounted to a record 1.4 million people. In 2021, this figure is expected to be 1.5 million.
In June 2021, the company also signed an agreement with the Bolshoye Savino airport of Perm and the government of the Perm Territory on the basing of its aircraft at this airport. But until the planes were delivered there, it is planned to base 1-2 cars there, a representative of the carrier told Vedomosti. Currently, the Red Wings fleet has seven Superjet 100s, and in the future their number will be increased to 32 aircraft of this type. In addition to the Superjet, the company operates 14 Airbus A320 / 321 aircraft and three Boeing 777 aircraft.
Red Wings in January-October this year, according to the Federal Air Transport Agency, carried 2.8 million passengers. This is 2 times more than in the same period in 2020. By the end of 2021, the company plans to transport about 3 million people – at the level of the “pre-pandemic” 2019, Klyucharev predicted in October. In the fall of 2020, the company began to replenish its fleet with Superjet aircraft that had accumulated over several years at the Irkut state corporation (part of the UAC of the Rostec state corporation), at that time about 60 vessels were unclaimed. The leased aircraft deliveries were hedged by state guarantees for 140 billion rubles, issued in 2020 by the decision of the President of Russia.
In addition, specifically for the 59 Superjet program in February 2021, the government approved Resolution No. 245 – on subsidizing the cost of an SSJ 100 flight hour. Operating companies receive 37,500 rubles. for each hour of flight in excess of the minimum flight time of 60 hours per month. Red Wings, when purchasing the SSJ 100, also counted on support within the framework of government decree No. 1212 (provides for a government subsidy to pay lease payments in the amount of 199 million rubles for each Superjet) and according to Resolution No. 301 (another 140 million rubles of subsidies for a new aircraft to create spare parts warehouse and crew training), Klyucharev told Vedomosti in September 2020.
“Obviously, no one is going to build a giant hub in Omsk. Flights will be carried out on Superjet, which is a regional aircraft of relatively small capacity. But he will find his own market – those who fly from Omsk or neighboring regions, ”says Mikhail Ganelin, an analyst at Aton.
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