General Director of the management company of the airport "Zhukovsky" - JSC "Ramport Aero" Thomas Vaishvila and First Deputy Director General of JSC "Ramport Aero" Yevgeny Solodilin told about the prospects for growth, plans for the development of the airport and work with airlines.

-     Today, the "Ural Airlines" airline carried the millionth passenger of the «Zhukovsky" airport. First of all, I want to know how your cooperation with this airline is going?

Thomas Vaishvila: It’s no secret that Ural Airlines is our base carrier. We are very pleased that this is one of the first airlines that believed in the airport "Zhukovsky". This year, according to plans, we will end up with a passenger traffic of 1.2-1.3 million people. I think that by the end of 2018, moreover, the share of Ural Airlines in this general passenger traffic will be about 650-700 thousand people. Next year, we forecast a significant increase in passenger traffic in general, and in our base carrier in particular. Ural Airlines feel very comfortable in Zhukovsky, both commercially and in production.

Achieving one million passengers a year raises our status as an airport. We are among the three youngest airports in Russia. There was an airfield here, but there was no airport and no airport infrastructure. In a short time we managed to build an airport and, together with all the services, create something that is effectively functioning today. And if initially a number of specialists had skepticism about the need and necessity of the airport in Zhukovsky, the figure of a million passengers completely dispel this skepticism.

I and our entire team are very grateful not only to the airlines who believed in us, but also to the passengers who chose Zhukovsky. If we work poorly, people just will not fly to us or from us. Clean station, more or less convenient transport accessibility, good buses, polite staff - of these things consists of the airport. I am sure that all this will only get better and better.

- How many passengers are you planning to serve next year?

Thomas Vaishvila: The milestone we want to achieve next year is 2 million passengers. This may seem like a small achievement, compared to 30–40 million passenger traffic in Moscow’s airports, but believe me, even at major airports, every million passengers is not very easy. There are about 20 airports in Russia carrying 20 million passengers, and our young airport is already among them. We hope next year to join the club of two million airports, and there are about a dozen of them in the country.

-     The growth of passenger traffic will inevitably require further infrastructure development. And this is another investment. What are your plans to expand the airport?

Yevgeny Solodilin: We understand that next year we will come to a bar of 2 million passengers, and this is already close to the peak load of the existing terminal, which was built in 2016. At the end of this - the beginning of next year, we plan to start designing the second phase of the passenger terminal of the airport. We have developed a master plan for the development of the airport. We understand that the infrastructure of the airfield can take up to 25 million passengers a year, but we will go to this step by step.

So, the next stage is to design the second phase of the terminal so that the throughput of the new and existing terminals in total corresponds to the passenger traffic of 6 million passengers per year. Maybe, let's come to the figure of 6.5-7 million passengers. And the third stage will be already based on the total passenger traffic of 10-11 million passengers.

In addition, construction of a cargo terminal, which we plan to launch in the first quarter of 2019, has begun. We also began construction of aircraft parkings with a total area of ​​86 thousand square meters, which will be used by passenger and cargo aircraft. However, the main task is to start designing the second stage of the passenger terminal, since next year we will reach the peak load, and it will be necessary to launch the second stage by 2020.

We will not build bulky, we will build a compact convenient terminal and integrate the new terminal with the existing one into a single complex. When we designed the existing terminal, many systems were already laid based on the expansion and integration with the second stage.

- You said about 25 million passengers. Is there really such potential?

Yevgeny Solodilin: We have big and serious plans, but we are talking about infrastructure possibilities in the near and somewhat longer perspective. The airfield infrastructure is capable of passing 25 million passengers a year, but we do not set ourselves specific deadlines when we get to these volumes. We have a task next year to start designing, by 2021, to ensure capacity of up to 6 million passengers per year. If the growth in passenger traffic is faster and the market “says” that we will grow rapidly, we will begin to develop our infrastructure at a faster pace.

- What is the expected amount of financial investments in the second phase of the airport terminal?

Thomas Vaishvila: Investments in the second turn of the terminal and another additional apron with all the infrastructure is about $ 45 million. These are all the funds of the shareholders. At the second stage, we see a great interest of banks, which also believed in us. When we applied to banks three years ago, they said: fly, and we'll see there. Now the situation has changed dramatically

- Which of the new carriers are you expecting next year?

Thomas Vaishvila: We expect, but we do not traditionally say the name. I can only say that they will be both Russian and foreign. At least two carriers in the next year should appear at our airport. The plans, as always, I want more and faster. I want a lot of things right away, but aviation does not tolerate such things. Everything should be smooth, timely and harmonious. I can only say, and we hope that next year we will have another basic carrier.

- With the advent of basic carriers, the question of providing technical maintenance of aircraft at the airport probably becomes relevant.

Yevgeny Solodilin: We have a master plan for the basis of the maintenance and repair of aircraft. Moreover, we planned this for 2019-2020. Operators have not yet decided, but MRO companies have an interest.

- What has changed in the airport after Avia Solutions Group left the project?

Thomas Vaishvila: Nothing. In the near future there will be good, positive news about our management team, but we both worked and we work. Development plans and tasks that we set, have not changed. Everyone already understands that the project has gone. The main task is to go no slower, but on the contrary, as quickly as possible. This year, of the expected 1.2 million passengers, about 100 thousand passengers will be transported on domestic Russian lines. All the others are international. This is a very important indicator. International flights and international freight traffic are very relevant topics. With the opening of the international cargo terminal, there will be an additional opportunity to earn both for airlines and the airport, and to be interesting and useful to the market.

- Have you already decided on the pool of cargo carriers?

Yevgeny Solodilin: In general, at the moment, we are already working with six carriers, and their number will increase after the opening of the international cargo terminal. Russian companies and several foreign ones will arrive to us. We would like to separately note that in 2016, when we started the implementation of the project of the Zhukovsky airport, one of our shareholders decided to create a cargo airline SkyGates. It is slowly developing, there are already three 747-400F aircraft. Of course, when opening a cargo terminal at Zhukovsky, we will work with this airline, but, in addition, there are a number of serious cargo carriers. I would not like to say which ones, but these are airlines that everyone in the market knows.

- What will be the investments in the cargo terminal and how much cargo will it be able to handle?

Yevgeny Solodilin: We are already finishing the cargo terminal. The volume of investments in the cargo terminal itself amounted to about $ 12 million, the cargo traffic that this terminal will pass through is 80 thousand tons. in year. It is already in a high degree of readiness, in the very near future we will launch it.

- Did you apply to the Russian Railways regarding the construction of a separate railway line to the airport?

You know that we worked a lot in the direction of transport accessibility. And one of the results of this work - on the day of the first flight at Zhukovsky, a platform was opened at the Otdykh railway station in Zhukovsky, which allows you to receive Sputnik trains. These trains run from the Kazan station, the journey takes only 32 minutes. Shuttle buses to our terminal, which run every 12 minutes, are organised from the “Rest”. If you calculate the time, then you can arrive in Zhukovsky from Moscow in just 50 minutes and without risk of getting stuck in traffic.

You can get to the airport by bus from the Kotelniki metro station. Rostavtodor has now announced the launch of the Oktyabrsky settlement bypass project. This is an important point, as the village is located on the Ryazan highway, where the main traffic jams, which make it difficult to quickly get to the airport. This is the moment that does not allow normal development to begin and begin the implementation of the second stage. We openly say, as investors, that if the issue with the Oktyabrsky bypass was resolved earlier, we would have started designing the second phase of the passenger terminal earlier, and, perhaps, would have already begun its construction.

As for the separate railway line to the airport, we approach this project quite rationally. The railway line is built for the budget. We understand the pace of its development. To get a railway branch here, it is necessary to ensure its load of at least 6 million passengers a year. And these are not the conditions of the Russian Railways, this is the economy, and it will operate from 6 million passengers a year. We worked it all out, we must first make the road, and then talk about Russian Railways.

- What new flights do you have in the winter schedule?

Thomas Vaishvila: Prague, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. Prague and we, passengers and airlines have long wanted Prague. Before the last meeting of the intergovernmental commission, the airlines made a serious inquiry on international destinations from the airport "Zhukovsky". Ural Airlines have requested about 10 new destinations, including to Budapest, London, Istanbul, Madrid, Milan. Such cities are among the top 10 European airlines that fly from Moscow. Of course, the countries in the CIS also fly very well. We see that all directions are loaded in the region of 90%.

- Did the rise in prices for jet fuel affect the work of the airport?

Thomas Vaishvila: This is a very sensitive topic for airlines. And God forbid that this problem was not transferred to the shoulders of passengers. The final payer is the passenger. But while airlines suffer. I know that it is planned to launch a mechanism to compensate for the increase in prices for jet fuel. Hopefully, the government will support. We have two refuelling complexes, one at Gromov Flight Research Institute, another one of our shareholders, this is the TVC "Russia". Part of the airlines are taken from one, some - from others. I know that airlines hold tenders every month. Well, that there is competition, it allows you to work on market conditions.

Yevgeny Solodilin: There are fuel filling complexes where fuel of almost any manufacturer is sold. All are present, and airlines have signed a comprehensive fuel supply agreement with some fuel companies. This may be Lukoil or Gazprom or Rosneft and others. They use the appropriate infrastructure. A gas station "in the wing" provides either of TKK "Russia" or Gromov Flight Research Institute.

- Are you planning to host business aviation?

Yevgeny Solodilin: So far this is not our topic. In the master plan, there is business aviation, it is planned, but it will develop as the infrastructure develops, primarily the road infrastructure, and only after that it will be possible to talk about a specific business terminal.

- Are you satisfied with the growth rate of the airport?

Thomas Vaishvila: Our short-term strategy is not to force events to collect 2-3 million passengers. We have more than 90% - international destinations. We are slowly and confidently developing this business with the airline and passengers; its first steps are difficult. A mark of a million passengers shows that the most difficult is over. It is necessary for the passenger to believe in us, and partners in other countries recognise us. It is a long and rather difficult road. There is always a temptation to go the easy way, to persuade the Russian carrier, which focuses on domestic transport, agree on marketing support, and here you have 135 destinations, flights to all cities of Russia, passenger traffic growth of 550% per week. But the goal is not that. The goal of any commercial facility is a planned business, in order not to inflate the scale, but to run a profitable business. To earn and the airline and the airport.