Ramenskoye set to become Moscow's fourth airport

Picture: Avia Solutions Group

Finally some things are starting to move in relation to Moscow's so much talked-about airport expansion.

Of all the locations that have been touted as potential new commercial airports to serve the growing Moscow air travel market, Ramenskoye airfield (also known as Zhukovsky airport, the location of the biannual MAKS air show) is the one that has the most solid development plans.

Avia Solutions Group, from Lithuania, is investing together with government-owned Rostec to make of Ramenskoye, located in Moscow's South-Eastern suburbs, a base for the low cost airlines that are expected to develop soon in Russia.

Avia Solutions Group (by the way, a company that we already talked about in our article about Small Planet Airlines) is bringing the cash (1B Rubles, approximately €22M, for 75% of the shares), while Rostec brings the land and existing facilities to the partnership. The project is expected to require a further €170M investment until 2019. 

I was surprised to learn that the new airport is expected to go into service really soon, as early as the summer of 2015, with 400,000 passengers expected in 2015 itself, a figure that could go up to the 10-12M passengers per year by the end of the decade.

It is not clear yet what airlines would use Ramenskoe airport, but I see a lot of Dobrolet blue in the corporate presentation the Avia Solutions Group has posted on its website.

Another thought that comes to my mind is...where is the next edition of MAKS going to take place?