TOMSK, Jan 14 – RIA Tomsk. Tomsk Airport has summed up its performance in 2021, in which its services were used by a total of almost 500 thousand passengers, a 30% increase compared to 2020; the reconstruction of the runway prevented it from reaching the "pre-crisis" figures, the air terminal's press service said on Friday.
It was previously reported that Tomsk airport's passenger traffic dropped to 348,500 people in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (it was 750,000 in 2019). In the summer of 2021, the airport began reconstruction of the runway and flights on most flights were limited to 1 day a week from August 3 to September 25. Intra-regional flights have been restricted since August 28.
"At the end of 2021, Tomsk airport served 494,346 people. Passenger traffic growth in relation to 2020 was 30%, but has not yet reached pre-crisis levels", – the press service reports, noting that the main reason why passenger traffic has not reached the level of 2019 is the reconstruction of the runway.
It is specified that 483,349 people, including transit passengers, used the airport's services on domestic routes, while only 10,997 people used its services on international routes. A total of 3,371 take-off and landing operations were carried out in 2021. Total cargo traffic was 1,868 tons.
"Direct flights from Tomsk to St. Petersburg were operated throughout 2021, and flights to Egypt were opened for the first time in a long time. Regional destinations continued to develop. Red Wings flights from Ekaterinburg to Ulan-Ude and Tyumen through Tomsk were very popular among city residents", – the statement said.
The press service also reminded that the Federal Agency for Air Transport approved the list of nine subsidized routes from the Tomsk airport in 2022: to Abakan, Barnaul, Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Nizhnevartovsk, Novosibirsk, St. Petersburg, Ulan-Ude and Tyumen. SiLA, Red Wings, IrAero, RusLine, S7 and Aeroflot (including Pobeda and Russia) have been assigned to flights on these routes.