The recent negotiations held by the management of Koltsovo airport and Ural Airlines have finally resulted in an agreement over the summer slots for 2007, reports the carrier’s press officer. Ural Airlines summer slots are going to almost fully coincide with the so-called historic slots for the summer of 2006.

Ural Airlines’ press officer says Koltsovo airport has been responsible for the carrier’s chartered flights delay on a number of occasions this year, obviously inconveniencing the passengers greatly. These events outraged both the company’s clients and the local travel agents. Ural Airlines Yekaterinburg-Antalya flight was delayed by five hours on April 21, 2007 when the airport staff refused to check the passengers in referring to airport’s GD Mikhail Maximov’s order to delay the flight by fifteen hours. The passengers and the airline management were able to reduce this to five hours; in the meantime, the airport claimed it had to put the flight off due to its limited ability to serve too many passengers at a time, even though it was announced at a conference on April 13, 2007 that the Koltsovo was fully prepared for the summer season.

On April 16, 2007 Ural Airlines sent some letters to Rosaviation and Rostourism suggesting that airports be made accountable for chartered flights delay. Immediately Rosaviation ordered Koltsovo airport to deal with Ural Airlines flights in the summer of 2007 in accordance with the so-called historic slot parameters that the carrier used a year earlier.