Buryatia’s governor asking Russian Federal Air Transport Agency to launch subsidised flights to Kazan

Head of Buryatia Alexey Tsydenov offered adding flights from Ulan-Ude to Kazan and Ulan-Ude to Chita to a list of subsidised routes in 2024. The Federal Air Transport Agency will hold the second stage of the selection process in late December.

“We now have an issue of subsidising interregional flights. We haven’t yet received a confirmation to subsidise flights from Ulan-Ude to Chita and Kazan. We are working on this with the Russian Ministry of Transport and the Federal Air Transport Agency,” said the head of Buryatia in a talk with a correspondent of Vostok-Teleinform news agency.

According to him, the Buryatian authorities envisaged public money for these purposes.

“We, in turn, are allocating co-financing and hope that these routes will be approved during the second stage of route selection,” he voiced his wish.

The first stage of the selection process was a month ago. The second and final stage will be in December.

“We hope the routes from Ulan-Ude to Kazan and Ulan-Ude to Chita will also be subsidised,” added Alexey Tsydenov.

If the given routes join the list of subsidised flights, direct flights will be launched and citizens of Buryatia and Tatarstan will have a lower price than now. Nowadays Russia’s Aeroflot, Pobeda, S7 airlines perform flights via Moscow, while the ticket price is from 12.000 to 30.000 rubles depending on the departure day.

It should be reminded that during the first selection stage, the Federal Air Transport Agency reduced the number of subsidised flights performed through Kazan. A Tatarstan airline submitted an application to perform flights in 55 routes but managed to obtain subsidies for 20 only. The flight programme decreased because of a change in the politics of Russia’s aviation authorities.

“A bigger number of flights to remote regions was prioritised. This is why there is such an incident,” says head of UVT Aero Pyotr Trubayev.