“RBC Daily” Newspaper. UTair Intends to Turn the Krasnoyarsk Yemelyanovo Airport into Its Hub

UTair – one of the fastest growing Russian airlines – intends to turn the Krasnoyarsk Yemelyanovo Airport into an outpost of its expansion into Asia and to the Russian Far East. The transportation company has already started negotiations with the administration of Krasnoyarsk Territory which is the owner of the local airport, and it intends to start flights from here to 27 destinations by 2020.

In accordance with the presentation of the transportation company prepared for the forum “Krylya Rossii” (Wings of Russia), the route network of the transportation company by 2020 will consist of two hubs (transit points) – Moscow and Krasnoyarsk. According to this presentation, it is planned to open 27 flights from Krasnoyarsk, including to Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. Now UTair flies from Yemelyanovo only to Moscow, Irkutsk and Novosibirsk.

In order to develop the Yemelyanovo Airport more than USD 1 billion of state and private investments will be needed in the nearest few years. It was reported at the end of 2011 that a private investor should have invested in the project about RUR 10-12 billion by 2020. With that the investor may get up to 75% of shares of the airport. As a result the airport capacity must increase up to 3.5 mln passengers per year by 2020.