Name of new Russian Far East airline to be put to vote

From today and until the 31st of December, it is possible to vote online the name of the new “unified airline” of the Far East region of Russia (before you get too excited about the chance to name a new airline, I must tell you that it seems you can only vote if you have a valid Russian cell phone number). Votes can be submitted through this website and people are asked to choose between three pre-determined names “Taiga”, “Far East” and “Aurora” (the name of the current largest regional operator), or they can also enter a new suggestion.

This is not the first time the Russian Far East aviation sector goes through a merger and a public vote to chose its future brand, the airline “Aurora” went through a similar process just a few years ago.

It can’t be overstated how important the fate of the local airline is for this region…We are talking about a huge territory (the Far Eastern Federal District has an area of almost 7M Sq km or almost as big as Australia), although sparsely populated (just over 8M. inhabitants).

Last year we published a specific in-depth feature on commercial aviation in the Far East of Russia, but events during the past year have completely altered this landscape and, for once, it is not due to coronavirus.

The economic development of the Russian Far East has long been a matter of concern for authorities in Moscow. In this geographical context of enormous distances and poor land infrastructure, aviation is of course, an essential foundation of any potential economic growth and, in this regard, it seems that the performance of Aurora, until now Aeroflot’s local subsidiary, as well as that of other airlines in this part of Russia, has not totally met expectations, since there has been talk in the Russian media that some sort restructuring of the regional industry was on the cards.

It seems that the final decision has been to amalgamate a number of regional airlines by merging them to Aurora and to create a new entity with the participation of all the different regional governments that compose the Russian Far East district. The new entity will operate under a new name (unless the current name “Aurora” is the most voted in the online poll - as of writing these lines it had a massive head start).

It is also not very clear what is going to be the final corporate structure, but has trickled down is that the new airline will pool resources from its different component airlines in areas such as maintenance, crew training and procurement. It will also coordinate and rationalize schedules and route networks.

The first necessary step for this to happen was the sale of 51% of Aurora, the region’s largest local airline, by Aeroflot to the government of region of Sakhalin (a region, by the way, with significant tourism potential), which already controlled the other 49%

With the airline now 100% in governmental hands, it will also be interesting to see what happens with fleets, at the moment Aurora operates a mix of Airbus A319 jets and Bombardier Dash-8 turboprops, but it is likely that the new entity will opt for Russian-made aircraft types, such as the MC-21, which is expected to enter service soon, the Superjet regional jet and the Il-114-300 turboprop, which was flight tested earlier this month. The Il-114-300 is the new, updated version of an already existing airliner, and, at 68 seats, it seems specifically designed for the sort of routes that are common in the Far East.

The new airline should, in theory be formed already by February of 2021 and around 30B rubles (around $400M) of government funds may be poured into it.

Curious to know which other airlines may join the project. Besides purely local operators, other airlines based in the Far Eastern Federal District include Yakutia Airlines and its subsidiary Polar Airlines, based in Yakutsk, Angara and IrAero, based in Irkutsk, Chukotavia, based in the easternmost region of Russia just opposite Alaska, and Alrosa, based in the diamond-mining town of Mirniy. Other airlines such as S7 have also some operations in the area but I think is unlikely they may join in.