OREANDA-NEWS. August 11, 2011. The year's six months have seen 2 million 579 thousand air travelers welcomed on domestic air services, with the majority choosing the routes to Krasnodar, Sochi, Mineralnye Vodi, Rostov-on-Don, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Samara, and Vladikavkaz.

A further 758 thousand air travelers took the Airport up on its international offering, mostly choosing to fly to Yerevan, Kiev, Cologne, Berlin, Stuttgart, Dushanbe, Donetsk, and Odessa.

Messrs. UTair remain squarely in the lead in terms of passenger volumes handled at Vnukovo International. The carrier operates a vast network of routes linking Moscow with Russia's other 65 cities and towns, as well as with destinations in the CIS and farther abroad. In the first half-year UTair has launched scheduled services to Hannover, Brno, Bratislava, Dushanbe, Ivano-Frankovsk, Naryan-Mar, Kogalym, Urai, Lipetsk, with many of these finding immediate favor and demand among potential air travelers.

A number of routes served out of Vnukovo International have seen a certain decline in passenger numbers over the year's first half when viewed against the same period of last year. This, however, has to do with certain objective causes such as the dissolution of Moskva Airlines in the year's first months, further compounded by Egypt's political destabilization in January-February, 2011. Since Vnukovo International places the security and safety of its passengers well above the considerable financial gains offered by the charter air travel market, the Airport's top management chose to implement the guidelines issued by the RF Ministry of Foreign Relations and the RosTourism, advising the RF citizens against traveling to destinations in Egypt at the time, and formally requested the would-be air travelers to refrain from doing so. The bulk of air services to destinations in Egypt was therefore cancelled.

The most significant dip in the Airport's passenger traffic, however, had been envisaged and quantified well in advance, as being due to the known bottleneck to be caused by the Airport's main runway intersection closing down for major overhaul. By way of a reminder, the RWY intersection renovation project was completed on June 30, strictly on time and without once disrupting the Airport's daily operations. And now Vnukovo International has another challenge to look forward to, the one of its 3000-meter RWY1 temporarily going out of commission for a complete renovation and extension.

The project calls for the airstrip's total overhaul, resurfacing and the addition of a further five hundred meters to its overall operating length. Furthermore, the runway's lighting and instrument landing systems will receive a radical upgrade, enabling the ICAO CAT III operations (min. decision height of 30 m. with the RWY visual range minimum of 200 m.). The construction of a number of rapid taxiways, as well as that of a commensurate drainage system is also part of the project.

During the runway intersection renovation, the aircraft operated using RWY2's available, albeit somewhat curtailed, length comprising 2030 meters. This proved to be sufficient for the majority of modern AC types currently in operation, with the final decision authority as to either continuing flight operations or relocating to another airport, resting with the tenant airline management all along.

Vnukovo's marketing and financial analysts had forecast a drop in the expected passenger numbers that would reach as much as 25 percent, but thanks to the quality job executed by Vnukovo's experts and workers to the highest of professional standards, most of the tenant air carriers found they could continue their regular flight operations even as the project went on, with both the customarily high quality and security levels undiminished. And it was thanks largely to these factors that Vnukovo International could keep the decrease in its passenger numbers to a minimum.

The productivity level of an airport drops inevitably during the active phase of major [on-airport] renovation projects. Such setbacks are but temporary in nature and quickly recoup themselves. In order to take Vnukovo International to the next level, it is imperative that all the renovation projects envisaged in its Master Plan be seen through, eventually providing an array of favorable conditions for attracting new air carriers. Thus, the year 2012 is expected to bring the completion of the RWY1 renovation project, enabling Vnukovo International to handle any existing aircraft types. And once the construction of the new passenger terminal A is completed and the facility comes fully online, the Airport's passenger throughput capacity will skyrocket to 25 million yearly.

Once Vnukovo International completes its ongoing renovation projects, it will be in a position to offer numerous comparative advantages, allowing it not only to regain lost ground, but to usher in a manifold improvement in its operating results.

The passenger growth trend observed over July's first two weeks, immediately following the completion of the runway intersection renovation, gives reason for Vnukovo's confidence in recaptured and soon-to-be-increased passenger growth.