The traffic growth rates at Moscow’s Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, and Vnukovo airports were extremely disparate in January 2018.

Vnukovo demonstrated the best results with a 25.5% improvement in traffic figures on the same month in 2017. In absolute figures, the airport served 1.355 million passengers. Vnukovo attributes the success to increased average daily flying times and seat occupancy of UTair Aviation’s flights. Among other contributing factors are the fleet expansion effort of Russia’s only LCC Pobeda Airline, which allowed the carrier to broaden its route network and increase the number of flights and traffic volumes. The high growth rate of Turkish Airlines was also a factor, as was the activity of Russia’s Rossiya Airlines.

International traffic through Vnukovo demonstrated the most remarkable growth at 47.3% year-on-year to 411,100 passengers. The most popular destinations were Phuket, Goa, Bangkok, Dubai, Punta Cana, and Larnaca.

Domestically, the gateway served 944,400 passengers (up 17.9%), with St. Petersburg, Sochi, Krasnodar, Makhachkala, Rostov-on-Don, and Mineralnyye Vody being the top destinations.

Passenger traffic at Domodedovo declined approximately 1% year-on-year in January to 2.07 million. The airport served 862,000 international passengers, mostly those traveling to Dubai, Antalya, Doha, Barcelona, and Nha Trang. Domestic traffic exceeded 1.2 million with Penza, Simferopol, Kemerovo, Samara, and Stavropol being the most popular destinations.

Sheremetyevo, the third airport serving Moscow, reported a 12.6% increase in passenger numbersin January versus January 2017 at 3.570 million. Domestic traffic went up by 19% to hit 1.4 million. The most popular destinations included St. Petersburg, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Simferopol, and Krasnodar. International traffic rose by 7.6% to 1.650 million, mostly to Paris, Prague, Yerevan, Bangkok, and Tel Aviv.