UrBC, Moscow, September 30, 2015. Russian air carriers flew approximately as many passengers between January and August 2015 as they did in the eight months of 2014. The Association of Russian Tour Operators reports, however, that the ratio of domestic and international travelers shifted dramatically, with over a half of all flights operated by Russian airlines becoming domestic ones.

The Russian companies’ overall passenger traffic declined by 0.6% in August; the number of international passengers went down by 16.3% (which continued the trend of a two-digit-percentage decrease in traffic in the previous months of the year so far), whereas that of domestic passengers increased by 18%.

As a result, only 36.3% of all flights operated by Russian air carriers were international ones (down 7.6% on last year); the share of domestic flights came to 55.8% and that of flights within the CIS member states came to 7.9%.

The overall number of passengers on Russian airlines’ flights rose by 2.3% in August 2015 compared with one year earlier.