Khanty-Mansiysk – UTair Aviation (UTair Aviation JSC) increased its volume of passengers by 18.9 percent to 113,017 people in October this year. The company’s passenger traffic gained 18 percent to 172.8m passenger-kilometers in the reported period.

At the same time, growth in the company’s number of passengers amounted to 10.7 percent to 1.2278m people in January to October 2004; passenger traffic advanced 12.7 percent to 2.1368bn passenger-kilometers in comparison to the corresponding period last year.

Commenting on the company’s performance in January to October 2004, UTair General Director Andrey Martirosov pointed out that considerable growth in the second quarter of this year was achieved thanks to activities that targeted the optimization of the route network, the construction of large transportation hubs in various regions as well as the opening of new promising flight routes.

“Obviously, we will continue this serious work in the future as well. On account of these measures we forecast growth at 25 percent in November to December alone,” Martirosov underlined.

UTair helicopters had 38,002 flight hours in the first nine months of this year.