Koltsovo International Airport (managed by Airports of Regions MC) provided its services for over 154,300 passengers between May 1 and 10, which is comparable to the same period in May 2019. In the wake of coronavirus pandemic, air traffic to domestic destinations was curbed significantly in May 2020, whereas travels to most destinations abroad were temporarily suspended, so the 2020 data was not taken into account.
The majority of passengers (141,500) used domestic airlines during this period. The busiest day for the airport was the last weekend of the past holidays, as 85 flights took off from Koltsovo on May 10 and over 17 thousand people used the airport’s services.
The top five most popular destinations from Ekaterinburg include Moscow, Sochi, St. Petersburg, Simferopol and Krasnodar. The past holidays were distinguished by a substantial increase in passenger traffic on flights to key tourist attractions within Russia. These include the Black Sea resorts of Sochi (+156% compared to the same period in 2019) and Simferopol (+142%), as well as popular sightseeing destinations of Kazan (+301%), Rostov-on-Don (+164%), Kaliningrad (+145%) and St Petersburg (+68%).
In spite of restrictions due to the pandemic, passenger traffic growth was recorded on a number of international destinations. For example, Yerevan showed an increase of 119% in the period of May 1 to 10, as compared to 2019. All in all, the Ural residents could fly on 16 foreign routes during the May holidays, including new destinations such as Cairo, Issyk-Kul and Minsk. Currently, flights to Cairo on Wednesdays and Saturdays are operated by Royal Flight and Azur Air, while flights to Minsk on Saturdays are performed by Belavia, a Belarusian carrier.