Ural Airlines cuts back on number of chartered flights to perform more scheduled ones
21 March 2007 (13:28)
‘At the moment, the company sees increasing the number of scheduled flights and cutting back on the number of chartered ones as one of its strategic challenges. Ural carriers are starting to give up practices of letting one travel agent book the whole airplane and are now trying to offer blocks of seats on scheduled flights to a few travel companies at a time. Most of the world’s major airlines prefer to focus on scheduled flights, since they are so much more convenient for passengers,’ Commercial Director of Ural Airlines Kirill Skuratov said to UrBC.
‘One can buy a ticket for a scheduled flight in any booking office in the world; the tickets for Yekaterinburg-Tel Aviv flight, for instance, are available in any office in Yekaterinburg, Tel Aviv, New York, or London. When in comes to chartered flights, tickets can only be obtained in local offices belonging to the travel agent who’s booked the plane. What is more, tickets for scheduled flights are normally cheaper than those for chartered flights. Besides, scheduled flights give the carrier a chance to have occasional ticket sales and regulate the passenger load in different times of the year. A scheduled flight makes it possible to bring along more luggage as well. If a customer is fond of, let’s say, kite-surfing and is taking a chartered flight to Hurghada, he or she will only be allowed to have five kilos of cabin luggage, so they will have to check their equipment in as the travel agent would rather the seats were used by passengers proper. On a scheduled flight, however, a passenger is permitted to take up to 30 kilos into the cabin with them,’ Mr. Skuratov says.
‘Ural Airlines has already switched from chartered to scheduled flights in respect of Yekaterinburg-Istanbul and Yekaterinburg-Tel Aviv flights. Yekaterinburg-Bangkok flight is a half-scheduled one; we are also working on a new scheduled Yekaterinburg-Antalya flight. As a matter of fact, the idea of switching to scheduled flights as far as Russia is concerned belongs to Aeroflot,’ Mr. Skuratov observed.
‘One can buy a ticket for a scheduled flight in any booking office in the world; the tickets for Yekaterinburg-Tel Aviv flight, for instance, are available in any office in Yekaterinburg, Tel Aviv, New York, or London. When in comes to chartered flights, tickets can only be obtained in local offices belonging to the travel agent who’s booked the plane. What is more, tickets for scheduled flights are normally cheaper than those for chartered flights. Besides, scheduled flights give the carrier a chance to have occasional ticket sales and regulate the passenger load in different times of the year. A scheduled flight makes it possible to bring along more luggage as well. If a customer is fond of, let’s say, kite-surfing and is taking a chartered flight to Hurghada, he or she will only be allowed to have five kilos of cabin luggage, so they will have to check their equipment in as the travel agent would rather the seats were used by passengers proper. On a scheduled flight, however, a passenger is permitted to take up to 30 kilos into the cabin with them,’ Mr. Skuratov says.
‘Ural Airlines has already switched from chartered to scheduled flights in respect of Yekaterinburg-Istanbul and Yekaterinburg-Tel Aviv flights. Yekaterinburg-Bangkok flight is a half-scheduled one; we are also working on a new scheduled Yekaterinburg-Antalya flight. As a matter of fact, the idea of switching to scheduled flights as far as Russia is concerned belongs to Aeroflot,’ Mr. Skuratov observed.
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