Airlines, Aviation and Air TraveL
UTair's firs A321 with sharklets. Picture: UTair
Hardly a day passes without one of Russia's major airlines adding new aircraft to its fleet and those are increasingly coming aerodinamically-efficient sharklets too.
Just a few days ago we reported on Aeroflot being the first Russian airline to fly a sharklet-equipped A320, today is UTair's turn to get its Airbus A321 with sharklets...and it will soon have company, as the Siberian airline expects to get seven more of the type before the end of this year.
Picture: Aeroflot/Airbus
First Russian airline to join the sharklet club: Aeroflot has presented its first sharklet-equipped Airbus A320.
Picture: Aeroflot/Airbus
The new aircraft, named after 19th C. scientist Alexander Butlerov, is coming to Russia straight from Airbus' factory and is going to be the 90th A320 family airliner on Aeroflot's fleet.
Following our post about the best Russian aviation blogs to follow, here are our suggestions for the best Russian aviation instagramers...this time, hopefully, without language barriers!
I must say it is quite a mixed list: there are pilots, people that work in airlines, photographers, an airline CEO and some corporate accounts, and not all of these Instagram accounts are exclusively about aviation, but, they have all in common, and therefore are in this list, because they usually have a good amount of flight-related photos that allow you to have a glimpse of the fascinating world of Russian aviation.
And remember that, of course, you can also follow Allplane on Instagram!
Wondering how the Russian airline industry has been doing lately?
According to data made public by Russian portal aex.ru, quoting information from the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency (that, however, as I write this post, is still showing data up to last November only), Russian airlines carried a total of 84,564,353 passengers last year, a healthy 14,2% increase over the previous year!
And who is in the roll of honour of airlines?
In case you were wondering, here is the top 5 of the Russian airline industry:
1) AEROFLOT
Pole position goes to flag carrier Aeroflot, of course, with 20,902,447 passengers (+18.4% up). Picture: Aeroflot
2) TRANSAERO
Transaero was second with 12,499,985 passengers, an increase of 21%
3) UTAIR
UTair, an airline that has been busy expanding and renovating its fleet was third with 8,182,074 passengers (+5.3%). Picture: UTair
4) SIBIR ("S7")
Sibir, also known as S7, and member of the Oneworld Alliance was Russia's fourth in the ranking of Russian airlines by number of passengers with 7,084,599 (+11.6%)
5) ROSSIYA
Rossiya (an Aeroflot subsidiary) was 5th, the St.Petersburg-based airline carried 4,590,146 passengers, up 9.1% over the previous year. Picture: Wikipedia
What's in store for 2014?
It remains to be seen whether the Russian airline industry can continue to sustain this double-digit rate of growth in view of the current perceived stagnation of the domestic economy.
Another factor to take into account is the launch of low cost airlines in the Russian market, if all goes according to plan Aeroflot's low cost airline, Dobrolet, should be getting in the top five in due time, but most likely not this year as it still has to start operations.
In any case, even if Ryanair, Easyjet and, maybe, Wizzair, are starting operations in Russia, these are likely to be at a small scale in the short to medium term, so it is unlikely it will affect traffic figures for the incumbent airlines.
At the other end of the country, the merger of Aeroflot's Far Eastern subsidiaries to form Aurora Airlines is also unlikely to affect this ranking as their goal of carrying 2.4M annual passengers would placee them well below Rossiya in volume of passengers.
Exploring Russian aviation. Picture: Aeroflot
If you are reading this blog it is likely that you are interested in aviation and airlines and follow several other blogs about this topic too. This is why I thought it could be of interest to put together a short list of some of my favourite blogs covering the aviation industry in quite a large, yet unrreported (at least in the Anglo- blogosphere) part of the World: Russia.
Most of them are written in Russian, but the highly visual nature of Livejournal, Russia's favourite blogging platform, and the excellent pictures you can find on most of these blogs, makes them worth checking, even if you do not understand a single word.
No need to say, Google Translate is getting better and better every day, so even this should not be an obstacle to enjoy some of these great blogs!
You will see some of them are not exclusively about aviation, as the authors sometimes add other topics such as travel or personal posts, but all of them are full of amazing aviation and aircraft pictures from different parts of Russia and the former Soviet Union.
This is not an exhaustive list, as I keep discovering new great blogs all the time. If you know of other blogs of note that could be included in the next update of this list, please do not hesitate to drop me a line!
Here is my selection of Russian aviation blogs: