Koltsovo airport of Yekaterinburg offers some of Russia’s priciest jet fuel. In fact, the price went up by over 30% in just one year and now comes to 30,600 RUR per ton or 37,194 RUR per ton if you count the price of the filling and maintenance. This is more than Moscow-based Domodedovo or airports based next to health resorts like Sochi, Anapa, and Mineralniye Vody charge their customers.

The soaring prices have already made the plane tickets more expensive, with the fuel fee sometimes coming to 20% of the price of a vacation in Turkey or Europe. Consequently, some tourist destinations have already become much less popular and a number of chartered flights have been cancelled.

In the meantime, Koltsovo claims the price increases are necessitated by the need to renovate the airport and invest in the construction of a new international terminal. This means the price of every ticket includes the so-called investment component, and each passenger thus finds himself or herself obliged to finance the airport’s development. Obviously, no dividends from this investment are to be expected.

On the other hand, Koltsovo airport’s shareholders did get over 74 million RUR worth of dividends for 2007, which is 37.65 times more than a year earlier.

A number of local experts found the case both dubious and illogical.

The growth of jet fuel price has become a state-wide problem, so Head of Russian Government Vladimir Putin called for finding an immediate solution to it. One way out could be the claim laid by the Federal Antimonopoly Service against LUKoil, Gazprom neft, TNK-BP Holding, Rosneft, and Surgutneftegaz – the Russian jet fuel market’s major players. The companies are charged with violating the competition protection legislation by setting monopolistic prices on wholesale jet fuel and diesel fuel market in Russia.