St. Petersburg Pulkovo airport launched a winter schedule on October 30 with three new overseas destinations amid a sharp decrease in the number of international destinations overall.
The Pulkovo winter schedule features new abroad destinations:
— Astana (Kazakhstan / Qazaqstan, by SCAT Airlines);
— Colombo (Sri Lanka, by AZUR Air);
— Sharm El-Sheikh (Egypt, by AlMasria Universal Airlines).
Flights frequency was enhanced to:
— Istanbul (Turkey);
— Antalya (Turkey);
— Yerevan (Armenia);
— Baku (Azerbaijan);
— Tashkent (Uzbekistan);
— Samarkand (Uzbekistan);
— Hurghada (Egypt).
The Turkey destinations, which used to be used solely by holidaymakers, have increasingly been sought after by Russian men escaping from a military call-up that’s been going on since September 21.
The same is right for cities in the Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS), or former Soviet republics. A lot of Russians have moved to Yerevan, Astana, and even Tashkent and Bishkek since February, 24, with the trend furthered by the military call-up.
Totally, there are just 25 direct international flights from Pulkovo at the moment versus 94 in 2019, the last year before the dark times arrived. Of these 25, only seven are not to parts of the former Soviet Union, and only one — to Belgrade — is to Western Europe as the majority of the civilized world has cut off air travel with Russia turning the country into a pariah.
The other six — to Dubai, Tehran, Bodrum, Istanbul, Dalaman, Antalya — are primarily for Russian holidaymakers. Foreign tourist flow to Russia has dropped to nearly zero. Cruise tourism and international railway transportation have also been stopped.
In 2019, 21 of 94 destinations were to the CIS, with the rest mostly to European cities.
On the domestic destinations side, things look much better. There are 64 direct flights, a bit less than in 2019 when it was 69. During the period from January 1 through August 31, Pulkovo served 11.9 million air travelers, up 300.000 to the same period of 2021.
The international flights segment saw 1.5 million of these 11.9 million, with the most popular destinations being Antalya, Istanbul, Dubai, Minsk, Tashkent, Osh, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Hurghada, and Urgench.
In 2019, traffic was 19 581 262 passengers (the whole year), with 12 110 964 falling on domestic flights and 7 470 298 on international ones, the figures that will not come again soon, if ever at all.