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British Airways (BA) has said the airline would like to increase its passenger numbers from St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport next year.
The airline has reportedly seen a 20% increase in passenger numbers on the route this year and Daniel Burkhard, British Airways' commercial manager for Eastern Europe, has said that it is a profitable route. The airline is looking to increase the current seven flights to London per week to 14, reports the St. Petersburg Times.
CurrentlyBA performs only one evening flight from St. Petersburg to London daily and it wants to establish one more flight in the early morning. It willenable British Airways to increase the number of transit passengers wishing to fly via London.
Burkhard has however predicted that such an increase would take time, as the negotiations for the increase from five departures a week to the current seven took five years. The current schedule was introduced in April 2004.
British Airways is currently negotiating with Russian airline companies. In fact, according to the intergovernmental agreement between Great Britain and Russia the airline companies of both countries must perform the same number of flights.
According to David Rousham, BA's area commercial manager for Eastern Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, the airline is unlikely to face strong competition from low-cost airlines such as easyJet or Ryanair in Russia. This is because of the strict regulations, and with state rather than private control of aviation, and high compliance costs.
British Airways reportedly has one competitor on the route, Pulkovo Airlines, which operates the route once a week in the winter and three times a week during the summer. Pulkovo's ticket prices reportedly start at USD270 while BA's prices start at USD300 for a roundtrip plus taxes.
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