In January–June, airlines carried about 1.6 million passengers between Moscow and St. Petersburg, an 18% decrease from the same period a year earlier, Kommersant reported, citing industry sources. The decline on this route is several times larger than the national average: according to Rosstat, the country's total airline passenger traffic fell by 3.2% over the six months.
The publication's sources attribute the reduced traffic to regular restrictions on airport operations under the “Kover” (Carpet) plan, triggered by Ukrainian drone attacks. St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport said in December that it had lost about 15% of its passenger traffic on the Moscow route over the year due to airport closures.
Schedule disruptions hit business travel hardest: demand for flights between the two cities fell by 23%, while demand for rail travel rose by 20%, according to AeroClub, a major corporate travel operator. As a result, the share of trains in business trips between Moscow and St. Petersburg increased from 61% to 70%, with nine out of ten such trips on high-speed trains.
Andrei Kramarenko, a senior researcher at the Higher School of Economics' Institute of Transport Economics, estimates that of the overall decline in passenger traffic on the route, about 4 percentage points (p.p.) come from reduced demand on domestic routes, up to 8 p.p. from passengers switching to trains, “where the probability of on-time arrival is much higher,” and up to 7 p.p. from reduced traffic due to direct airport closures during drone raids.
Additionally, the route has been affected by the departure of several airlines due to competition with Aeroflot's “Shuttle” program, and by an increase in direct international flights from St. Petersburg, which reduced transit through Moscow. Currently, flights between Moscow airports and Pulkovo are operated by Aeroflot, its subsidiaries Pobeda and Rossiya, as well as S7 and Azimuth. Aeroflot reported a “slight decrease in passenger traffic” in the first half of the year without disclosing figures, noting that before the summer season, the number of flights on the route was optimized in favor of other destinations. S7 said its passenger traffic grew by 17% after increasing flights from two to three per day.