10 airlines merged in Russia

Moscow City and state-owned company Russian Technologies are founding a new airline in Russia. 10 relatively small companies of which many belonged to the now bankrupt AiRUnion are being combined.

One of the companies to be merged is GTK Rossiya which operates daily between Helsinki and St. Petersburg with an Airbus-craft.

The companies joining Russian Airways carried 11 million passengers making the new company larger than Aeroflot, which until now has been Russia's largest airline. The new airline will however have to invest a lot of money as most of its aircraft are outdated and uneconomical Tupolev and Iljushin planes.

(HS)