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Spoke in Aeroflot's SA growth plans
AIRLINES
GIANT Russian airline Aeroflot has been denied permission by the Directorate of Civil Aviation to reroute its Moscow to Johannesburg flight because it might clash with SA Airways' (SAA's) future plans for Africa. Aeroflot operates a weekly, 18-hour flight from Moscow via Cairo and Nairobi, but applied for permission to shorten the flight with a stop in Tunis. Alexander Krasnenker, deputy director-general of commerce and advertising at Aeroflot and on a visit to SA, says the application was turned down, and he believes this was at the request of SAA. "SAA has plans to increase its service to the rest of Africa. The local airline is probably also concerned that visitors from Europe planning to visit South Africa might initially fly to Tunis and then connect with an Aeroflot flight to Johannesburg which would be cheaper. "We had hoped that if we could fly from Tunis to South Africa, we could open up this route which would be of benefit to SAA. At present we have to fly empty aircraft to Cairo as we are not permitted to pick up passengers in Johannesburg on the return flight," he says. Prior to the collapse of the USSR, Aeroflot was the largest airline in the world, but has broken up into more than 300 smaller airlines operating from countries such as Kazakhstan , Georgia, Latvia and Lithuania. Aeroflot, which transports about 5 000 visitors to and from Moscow each year, is upgrading its fleet. "We have a budget of about $15-million to improve our image internationally as we are effectively a new company. South Africa is a country we have neglected in the past and as people in Russia now have money to travel we hope to increase tourism between the two countries," says Krasnenker.
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