The amount of tickets booked and sold online now makes up 3% of all the tickets sold by Ural Airlines in Yekaterinburg. The figure only constituted 1% three months ago.

Should the regional clients keep up with this pace of mastering online booking, the amount of tickets sold online may reach the average global figure of 30% by February 2007, or within a year of the introduction of the service.

E-ticketing in Russia is affected by the limited ability of the airports to support online booking technologies and by the companies being reluctant to invest as well as by the lack of the necessary legislation.

Commercial Director of Ural Airlines Kirill Skuratov said that their company was prepared to invest a lot of money into e-ticketing; so far, the best part of the investments is used to buy new equipment and software as well as marketing promotion. One of the promotion strategies is offering a 40% discount on a ticket to Moscow- and Saint Petersburg-bound flights.

The first online booking office was introduced in Yekaterinburg in February 2006.