Ural Airlines’ General Director Sergey Skuratov spoke about the carrier’s performance in 2008 and its plans for the coming year at a press conference aboard A 320 airplane that arrived at the company’s premises on December 12, 2008.

This year, the airline has kept on implementing its long-term fleet replacement program. The company bought as many as four A 320 Airbus planes in 2008, so it is now the proud owner of six such planes altogether.

‘The airline’s fleet upgrading will carry on next year as well. We’ll be operating between ten and twelve A 320 aircraft by the end of 2009. Agreements for four planes have already been signed, with the delivery expected in the summer of 2009. These modern and fuel-efficient planes will enable us to offer our passengers many more new destinations,’ Sergey Skuratov explained.

On January 20, 2009, Ural Airlines is to start operating scheduled flights to Paris. New flights to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatski and Magadan will become available next year, too. In addition, more flights will be operated from Moscow. Ural Airlines is already operating Moscow-Bratsk and Moscow-Chita flights. A Moscow-Novosibirsk flight might be soon added to this list.

The executive also said Ural Airlines was going to get a 1.2 billion RUR soft loan from Bank VTB in order to implement the company’s projects and refinance its earlier loans.

‘Getting the loan means Ural Airlines is one of the major Russian carriers with stable and dynamic development,’ Skuratov said.