Ural Airlines negotiated for the introduction of chartered flights from Yekaterinburg to Paris and back on October 30, 2007. The flights will be available throughout the winter holiday season; this was coordinated by Europort and DSBW-Tours, who are already offering tours to France to the city dwellers. As it happens, the only way to get to Paris this winter is through these travel agents, as there are no plane tickets freely offered for sale, the airline’s press officer reports.

Prior to this, the company’s longest scheduled flight that used to take about six hours and flew the passengers to Paris was cancelled in September 2006 due to sky-high fuel prices set by Koltsovo airport and the relatively low demand for the destination. So people willing to go to Paris have had to get there through Moscow, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, or Frankfurt since then.

The airline’s GD Sergey Skuratov mentioned in the course of signing an agreement with Airbus regarding the acquisition of seven new planes that direct flights to Paris would only be resumed in the summer of 2008. Yet the negotiations with some travel agents have already lead to two direct flights to Paris appearing in the carrier’s winter timetable from December 28, 2007 to January 4, 2008 and from January 4, 2008 to January 11, 2008. All the flights will be operated using an A-320 plane.