Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) spent over 52m RUR on employee training programs in the first half of 2011. 6,584 employees underwent various professional development, re-training, and additional vocation programs at MMK in the six months of this year; 3,157 people out of these are workers and 3,427 people are managers, experts, and clerks. Most workers (1,649 people) attended specific courses, 790 people underwent re-training programs, 169 people attended vocational courses, 304 people went to advanced learning programs, and 245 employees obtained a second vocation,’ MMK reports.

Ural Airlines is launching a sale of plane tickets to China, the airline’s press service reports. On September 1-30, 2011, plane tickets for Yekaterinburg-Beijing flights are available at special prices: ?159 for one-way ticket and ?350 for the round trip (plus the fees). The offer is valid for flights to be operated between October 1, 2011 and December 20, 2011. Tickets for Ural Airlines flights can be bought via the air carrier’s website www.uralairlines.com as well as in the booking offices.

Stern, the only bidder, won the tender for the repair of Mercedes automobiles belonging to Sverdlovsk Region Automobile Park. The repairs tender amounts to 1.99m RUR. The charge for a rate-hour is 2,100 RUR; the winner of the tender will service a total of fifteen vehicles. In fact, Stern has already won the tender for the purchase of a luxury car for the governor of the region. At the time, only one bidder was allowed to submit an application for the auction, which is why a claim laid by the region’s public prosecution authorities is now being processed in Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration

UTair Airlines was unable to meet its stockholder obligations in full. The company explains they were unable to pay the dividends for the year 2010 to some of the shareholders whose whereabouts and bank details were unknown; last year’s dividends amounted to 69.24m RUR altogether. Thus the sum of the dividends that have remained unpaid comes to 522,190 RUR.

The BOD of E.S. Yalamov Ural Mechano-Optical Plant Production Association suggested that the enterprise’s only shareholder Rostechnologii State Corporation should distribute the profit that was not distributed earlier (33.12m RUR) in the following way: 8.71m RUR should be directed to the payment of dividends and 24.4m RUR should be left within the company.

Rosaviation prolonged Avianova’s recently expired aircraft operator license at the last minute, but the license was prolonged by only one year rather than the standard two years, Kommersant reports. Now the agency announced last week that it had some doubts as to the air carrier’s financial solvency, so the airline had to undergo a very thorough inspection. The company representative said the last bit of papers requested by Rosaviation had to be delivered just yesterday. We’ll keep on adding new aircraft to our fleet of vehicles, independently and through a leasing company. By 2012, the