Tolmachevo Airport on Track for Record Year

Tolmachevo International Airport in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk is the largest facility in Siberia and is currently the sixth largest airport in the country behind the three main Moscow gateways – Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo, Pulkovo International in St Petersburg and Koltsovo International in Ekaterinburg. The airport was first opened to commercial passenger aircraft in July 1957 but is now one of the fastest expanding facilities in the country.

In 2010 the airport carried 2,261,630 passengers a 25.3 per cent increase on the previous year and this growth has continued during the first half of 2011 with 1,150,281 passengers passing through the airport, up 22.7 per cent on the first six months of last year. The airport welcomed its one millionth passengers on June 14, one month earlier than last year and it is now on track to handle close to 2.7 million passengers for the full year, breaking the three million passenger threshold in 2012.

The table above shows that local carrier S7 Airlines dominates traffic from the airport offering twice as many flights as it nearest rival and offering four times as many seats. The carrier currently accounts for 35.8 per cent of the total weekly capacity at Tolmachevo International and is planning to further increase its network from the facility in the coming years. The table below highlights the main markets from the airport and unsurprisingly, links to the Russian capital dominate with Domodedovo served up to nine times a day.

The recent expansion of the airport’s route network has been a key driver behind the growth of the airport’s traffic. Last year alone 50 new medium-haul flights were introduced including links to ten additional destinations – Chelyabinsk, Gorno-Altaisk, Kazan, Nadym, Novy Urengoy, Noyabrsk, Omsk, Prague, Samara and Tomsk. These were supplemented by additional regional links within Russia and neighbouring Commonwealth of Independent States nations.

This year new scheduled flights to Baku, Berlin, Kiev, Larnaca, Salekhard, Thessaloniki and Ufa have been opened, while links to Europe (Milan, Helsinki, Munich, Istanbul), Asia (Tokyo, Seoul) and Australia (Sydney) are under discussion, according to the airport operator.

But, it is not all about passenger traffic and the airport has also witnessed a significant growth in cargo carriage, with uplifted tonnage increasing 17.6 per cent in the past year. Tolmachevo International introduced a special incentive program for freight carriers to make technical stops at the airport and this has seen Air China Cargo become a regular airport user. European carrier Air Cargo Germany also started using the airport in February this year, while negotiations are currently taking place with Turkish operator ULS cargo for it to bring its freighter aircraft to Novosibirsk. The airport’s management has ambitions to expand its freight traffic significantly over the coming years and is seeking to also attract Cargolux, Cargoitalia, UPS, FedEx, Great Wall Airlines and others to Tolmachevo International.