Ural Airlines transferred this year’s millionth passenger in the Ural Region on December 26, 2006. This was the Financial Director of Delrus Maxim Guzovskiy. Kirill Skuratov, the Commercial Director of Ural Airlines, congratulated Mr Guzovskiy on the event and presented him with a free flight to Prague and a laptop.

‘Only 10 out of 199 Russian carriers actually hit one million in terms of the passenger turnover (these are Aeroflot, S7, Transaero, and some others). A millionth passenger symbolizes not only the success of the company but also the better living standards of the Ural population, who now see a plane trip as being as affordable as going by train. This trend can also be seen in our new pricing policy. Ural Airlines are not going to stop at the figure of a million passengers a year. We are hoping to service 1,200,000 passengers in 2007,’ states the company’s press release.

The impressive decrease in prices was made possible due to the carrier’s numerous efforts in terms of trying to make Koltsovo airport management reconsider their fuel prices. The second key factor that made the prices so low was that the company started replacing its fleet with the more fuel-efficient foreign planes (their first Airbus 320 has been in operation on both international and domestic flights for over a month). Finally, the new ways of ticket distribution such as online booking and points of sale in EuroSet (the mobile phone retailer) stores made the plane trips even cheaper.