‘Crimean holidays’: a mess in the Simferopol airport and cancelled flights from Kazan
The Internet is full of headlines about the cancellation of numerous flights from Simferopol airport in the peak tourist season — some tourists have to buy tickets at their own expense for not charter flights, waiting in anticipation of departure at the airport for several days. The flights from Kazan also got in that number. The correspondent of Realnoe Vremya tried to find out what is happening in the airport of Simferopol in the peak tourist season.
Four flights less
Since last week there started to appear the news that it is very difficult to fly from our advertised Crimea – due to the cancellation of some flights during the peak tourist season, people have to wait for two days for departure or to buy tickets for other flights.
In particular, on 25 July, from the sunny resort in addition to the above mentioned, it was cancelled in total 4 flights of the following airlines: Yamal, Red Wings and IFly. The latter was supposed to take passengers from Simferopol to Kazan. As it turned out, this story repeats not for the first time. So, on 17 July, the head of PR-service of Nefis group of companies Aigul Mirzayanov published in his Instagram the post, which stated that due to the cancellation of the flight of IFly they had to stay in Crimea for two days more. At the same time, on the website of Rosaviatsiya there is the information that the agency extended the document validation that gives the right to perform flights until 1 August. As previously it was reported, this was done on the results of scheduled inspections of financial and economic condition of the company.
'It is due to purely technical reasons or because of lack of planes, either due to the overabundance of recruited flights. But this is my personal guess, of course, we need to investigate the internal situation,' said Director General of UVT Aero Pyotr Trubaev.
It is not so easy to buy tickets
We would like to note that in addition to this airline the other ones also fly from Crimea to Kazan — Saratov Airlines, Rossiya, Aeroflot, Pegas Fly and Nordwind airlines, UVT Aero and others. There were no delays or cancellation of flights by these airlines, at least for 25 July.
In general, Trubaev notes that you should not look for the connection between the cancellation of flights by several companies. Each of them is doing it for their own reasons. However, the interlocutor of our newspaper notes that most likely the cancellation of flights does not depend on demand.
'In our company, on the contrary, it reaches almost 100% load. And I'm sure other airlines have the same story.' In its turn, UVT Aero provides 13 flights to Simferopol from different cities of Russia in a week. At the moment, according to the interlocutor of the edition, it is not so easy to buy a direct ticket to Crimea in the midst of the season.
Crimean airport is to blame?
According to the online board of the Simferopol airport, the airline with probably the record number of canceled flights is the Moscow VIM-Avia, which recently was re-registered in Tatarstan. So, only on 22 July, from Simferopol to Moscow, according to the board, it was canceled 7 flights. On 25 July, the number of canceled flights was two.
The correspondent of Realnoe Vremya turned to the airline for the comment and received the official response. The head of Department for public relations of airline VIM-Avia Elena Fedorova warned that some of the airports, in particular, the airport Simferopol, do not sort the flights on the current and planned ones (those flights that were in the plans, but which in the end were not open), in the result of which there is the cancellation of flights. According to Fedorova, there were no cancellation of flights, including on Friday. At the same time on the website of the airline it is stated that VIM-Avia continues to work to fix the failure of the schedule.
'In operational mode, it is being conducted the correction of the schedule of flights connected with the introduction into work of wide-body Boeing 777 aircraft, in connection with which a part of the flights are being combined to implement them in the aircraft of larger capacity. In particular, today on the route Moscow-Simferopol the flights НН 339/340, НН 317/318, НН 319/320, НН 335/340 flew without delay of the schedule. НН 312 flight departed with a delay of 18 minutes. Only the evening flight НН 322 will be actually delayed for 3 hours, about which all the passengers were notified in advance,' it was reported in the published information.
Director General of UVT Aero Pyotr Trubaev, commenting to Realnoe Vremya on the situation with the mass cancellation of flights suggested that at the moment VIM Avia just does not enough aircrafts:
'I far as I know, they have a rather complicated situation with aircrafts. I guess, the cancellation is connected with a purely technical matter.'
Realnoe Vremya turned to the airport for comment, but at the time of publication it could not be obtained.