The total number of travelers who received services from Strigino airport stood at 436 thou people, most of them using domestic airlines. The ban on international flights imposed since late March has markedly affected the traffic. If more than 270 thou passengers of international flights claimed the airport’s services in 2019, ten times fewer people traveling abroad used them in 2020 with most of these flyers receiving these services before the restrictions had been imposed.
The growing traffic heading for inland health resort destinations has been this year’s specific feature. From January to September inclusive more than 56,000 passengers (+61% year-on-year) set out for Sochi, Simferopol and Anapa from Nizhny Novgorod, with six airlines performing flights to the domestic seacoast, namely RedWings, Nordwind, Urals Airlines, Smartavia and IrAero. The frequency of flights on these routes sometimes reached 7 daily flights.
In June, for the first time since 2016 direct regular flights from Nizhny Novgorod to Mineralnye Vody (operated by IrAero) have been resumed. As part of the regional route network extension, flights from Strigino to Saratov (operated by Azimuth Airlines) have commenced along with flights to Novy Urengoy (operated by IrAero Airlines).
Moscow, Saint-Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Perm and Krasnodar were most popular destinations with passengers. Overall from January to September 2020 direct regular flights were performed from Strigino to 22 destinations.