Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport gained the highest market share in the first months of 2011. The airport managers plan to transport 21 million passengers this year.
The Sheremetyevo International Airport recorded the largest growth of passenger traffic among the airports in Moscow in the first quarter of 2011. According to the statistics, the airport reached the highest market share of international traffic – 47.3%.
The airport’s press office stated that the success was achieved thanks to a number of factors. "The well diversified structure of transportation based on regular, mostly European and Asian routes, coupled with continual effort to attract new carriers, and further development of the existing routes allowed the Sheremetyevo Airport to gain the highest market share in the Moscow region."
Since the beginning of the year the number of passengers at Sheremetyevo grew by more than 20% to more than 4 million passengers compared to the same period last year. The passenger traffic on international routes increased by almost 18% (almost 3 million people).
"In a relatively high projected consumer and business activity and the level of demand for air travel to Sheremetyevo the airport plans to serve about 21 million passengers during the current year," added the PR manager of the airport.
Regarding the domestic flights the growth was even more significant – up by almost 26% to 1.5 million passengers.
The most popular air carriers at the Sheremetyevo were "Aeroflot", "Nordavia”, “Avianova” and “Transaero”. Among the most popular foreign destinations were Paris, Bangkok, Istanbul, Prague, and in Russia it was St. Petersburg, Krasnodar, Sochi and Kaliningrad.
According to the rating of Airports Council International EUROPE, the Sheremetyevo Airport is the most quickly growing airport in Europe (category of airports serving more than 15 million passengers per year). Among European airports with passenger traffic of 10 to 25 million people a year Sheremetyevo retained second place, in terms of growth rate in February.