‘Last year was rather difficult for our business. An airport is a sort of an acid test for a region’s economy: once the metallurgical, machine-building, and other regional industries have faced the hard times, our passenger turnover decreased by 14.2%,’ General Director of Yekaterinburg’s Koltsovo Airport Evgeniy Chudnovskiy announced at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg.

The airport reports the number of sorties dropped by 15.9% in 2009 compared two 2008 and reached 13,798 sorties altogether. The passenger turnover totaled to 2,169,136 people last year; the number of people using domestic flights declined by 15.26%, the number of those using international flights went down by 10.72%, and the number of those flying within the CIS plunged by 21.13%. Also, the airport handled 20.8% less mail and cargo last year compared to the year before.

‘Nevertheless, our passenger turnover has been on the increase lately. For one, the number of passengers at the airport rose by 21% in the first ten days of January 2010 alone. If this trend carries on, we are going to merge our two terminals into one big domestic flights one. The thing is, once the new terminal has been put up, the old one has remained idle. We’ll make a decision on whether to go through with this merger in the middle of the year 2010. In case the passenger turnover fails to increase, the merging will not be expedient,’ Chudnovskiy added.