‘Even though the head of Rosaviation Evgeniy Bachurin said air fare might go up by 20% to 40% in the near future, Ural Airlines is not planning to make its tickets more expensive, the airline’s press officer reports. The change has been predicted due to the new safety check rules that provide for stricter search of passengers prior to the flight. Yet these new requirements are only likely to affect the price of the ticket very slightly. Ural Airlines has never stuck to the policy of immediate price increases when the market tends to fluctuate,’ Ural Airlines’ Air Safety Director Vladimir Latokhin says.

Deputy General Director Vladimir Chikilev supports the idea of keeping the prices stable in spite of the changes the company’s air fleet is undergoing.

'On average, our airplanes are twelve to fifteen years old, and you couldn’t say this was too old. We are currently busy upgrading our air fleet through an agreement with Airbus. We are to purchase seven new planes from them and paid the first installment as recently as this July - and we managed to keep our ticket prices the same! Provided we have some clever planning, we can renovate our aircrafts without putting the burden of this on the passengers in any way,’ Mr. Chikilev says.

Renovating the company’s air fleet is part of a current re-branding campaign that started as early as 2006. The carrier aims to do away with all of its TU 154 B planes and replace them with A 320 ones made in Europe. In addition, an agreement was signed by Ural Airlines and Sukhoi Civil Aircraft on July 23, 2007 regarding the acquisition of SuperJets to be used for domestic flights.