Sheremetevo has retained passenger volume
Domodedovo is Moscow's second-largest airport
Zhukovski is a base for charter airlines
Paul Duffy/MOSCOW
In 1990, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Moscow's four civil airports handled 44.3 million passengers. Six years later, that figure had shrunk to 17.3 million, and a poor reputation for passenger friendliness and customer service has not aided improvement. The biggest problem, and one shared by all, is lack of money, but there are other concerns. The airport managers are addressing their problems in different ways.
Despite the fall in traffic, the four airports (Bykovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo) are facing competition not only from airports in Central and Western Europe seeking to offer better hub services to the Russian traveller, but also from military and research airports near Moscow. Chkalovsk is now offering some domestic scheduled passenger flights, while Zhukovski is a base for many charter cargo and business airlines.
Little co-operation exists between the four, even down to public-transport-links, vital if Moscow is to achieve hub-and-spoke status. State support in a country with major budgetary shortfalls is, for the moment, unrealistic, although Moscow City Council has asked the Government to hand over Sheremetyevo and Vnukovo to the city authorities, which would then guarantee any development funding.
SHEREMETYEVO
Moscow's international airport, the only one permitted to serve international passengers until the break-up of the Soviet Union, handled some 10.5 million passengers in 1990. This number fell to under 7 million by 1992, but had climbed back to 9.5 million by 1996, and is expected to reach 10.2 million in 1997.
Sheremetyevo's relative success in retaining passenger volumes has several factors behind it:
nit is still the major international airport, not only for Moscow, but also for western Russia, and international passenger numbers have been the first to recover and even to grow;
nits Aeroflot unit, now called Aeroflot - Russian International Airlines, has begun to develop a network of domestic (ie, inside the CIS) routes to improve its international traffic;
nthe growth of Transaero, Russia's major new airline. Based at Sheremetyevo, it now connects 29 CIS and international destinations with Moscow and, in 1997, will carry some 1.6 million passengers, almost all of which will take off or land at Sheremetyevo.
ncongestion at the limited international terminals at Moscow's other airports has resulted in some airlines transferring some holiday flights to Sheremetyevo, and traffic is growing on the flights of the 38 international carriers which bring passengers into Russia's capital.
Sheremetyevo's director of passenger and ground-handling services, Viktor Fedoseikin, says that the airport was separated from the airline in 1995, but it is still Government-owned.
"We realised that we needed to change to meet the needs of passengers and airlines - our customers - and one of the first things we did was to enter new agreements with some airlines outlining their specific requirements for ground handling - for example, with British Airways, the agreement has an annex about quality control and this specifies that luggage must be on the [delivery] conveyor belt 15min after the aircraft arrives - although passengers must still queue for immigration and customs," he says.
In November, customs announced a simplified procedure because of the intolerably high pressure on officials at the airport. It will need some time to ensure that it will work.
"A lot of our difficulties are caused by the airport's design. It came into service at the end of the 1950s, before widebodied aircraft had entered service. Today, 60% of our traffic arrives or departs on widebodies," Fedoseikin says.
In September, after 18 years of on/off construction, Sheremetyevo's second runway, parallel to the first, was opened. This allowed the old runway to be temporarily closed for repairs.
"Although the two runways are too close - at 350m [1,150ft] - for parallel operation, the opening allows us to increase movements from 22 per hour to 30. In winter, we will clear snow from one while using the other, thus we should be open at all times. Both runways are ICAO [International Civil Aviation Organisation] Category II-equipped - the old one is equipped to Cat III, but is not yet commissioned."
DOMODEDOVO
Moscow's second-largest airport, Domodedovo, was opened in the late 1960s to serve domestic services to Siberia and the Soviet Union's Far East. Until late 1996, it remained a united airline, airport and technical base under the title Domodedovo Civil Aviation Production Association, but recently the Government has decided to divide it into three separate bodies - the airline, the air terminal and the administration, which will be tasked with letting out the state-owned sites and with collecting rent and taxes for the state.
Leonid Sergeev has been Domodedovo's general director since 1990, and is to take charge of the new administration body. "I think that for Russia a united airline and airport made sense," he says, "but we have to adapt to changing times. The new structure is more logical as the national economy develops, and airlines and airports will grow with the economy."
Sergeev says that, in the early 1990s, "-we had great hopes of building a new beginning with the British Airways/Aeroflot joint venture Air Russia, but we could not raise money to develop the new terminal." In the past few years, Domodedovo has opened a new international terminal ("not big enough", according to Sergeev), and has completed a substantial new cargo terminal which triples the size of the site opened in 1995. "We have spent some $25 million and, early in 1998, we will begin work on a new passenger terminal," says Sergeev.
This will cost $60 million for the first stage. "We are in detailed negotiation with financiers and will shortly select a contractor. Banks will provide 50% of the funding, and the first stage will take some 20 months to complete. Next, we will update the engineering and communications of the airport. Already we have upgraded one runway to Category II, although Cat II conditions are rare here," says Sergeev.
"We have a lot of work to do - we would like to see our technical base [engineering] begin to assist Western aircraft, and to see more airlines make Domodedovo their base," Sergeev says.
VNUKOVO
Moscow's oldest major airport, Vnukovo has been serving the capital since 1936. Like the others, it has seen traffic drop heavily, from just under 15 million passengers in 1990 to just under 5 million in 1996. It was, however, the first airport to separate from its airline, and the first to privatise. Today, the state owns just 25.5% of the airport, while staff and outside investors own the balance.
The airport's first deputy general director, Vladimir Zamkov, describes its financial state as "-quite good - but it needs to be because we have to make major investments in its development, and we have to attract investors".
"Our traffic has changed, too. In the past we catered for flights to the south of the Soviet Union and to Central Asia and West Russia. Now, some 15% of our traffic is for international flights and we have the status of an international airport. But we need to build a new international terminal at a likely cost of $50 million. This would allow us to serve 1,000-1,200 passengers per hour and to restructure our old terminal for domestic traffic," says Zamkov.
The airport is discussing these plans with financiers and working to achieve acceptable terms. Later plans will bring the total investment needs to some $120 million. "This would allow us to offer quality service to up to 12 million passengers annually," says Zamkov, who adds: "With business aviation growing, we are also considering building a corporate terminal."
Some 25% of the airport's revenues come from non-aviation activity - heating, communications, rents, storage and parking. "We are working to lower airport costs for our customers. We opened our first duty-free shop in October and we will use this to learn the trade before the new terminal opens," Zamkov says.
Without central planning and with reduced surface connections between airports, it is "-more difficult to consider Moscow as a hub. We are now working to build international services [and make Vnukovo a hub]. With Sheremetyevo and Domodedovo expanding their cargo services, we don't see much market for us in the short term. We want to see more services. Today, Vnukovo Airlines and Karat are based here, with several smaller companies, and Transaero plans to start in early 1998. We hope to see some foreign carriers when our terminal opens," Zamkov says.
BYKOVO
While all of Moscow's airports have problems, Bykovo's are in a class all of its own. The regional airport, which handles Yakovlev Yak-42s and ten- to 50-seat short-range aircraft, saw passenger numbers fall from 2.8 million in 1990 to 250,000 in 1996. In May 1997, the general director was voted out of office and, a few weeks later, the new general director, Vladimir Chernaev, was seriously injured by a bomb which killed one of his bodyguards.
An application to the courts saw the new director's appointment set aside; in November, another general meeting resulted in the re-appointment of the old director, Gennadi Sytnik, but with the Chernaev also appointed to the board. Bykovo must find ways of increasing its traffic urgently or else face closure, which could force resident overhaul company Bykovo Aviation Services to relocate or to close.o
Source: Flight International
