The air traffic intensity in Russia increased by 9.8% in 2018 and reached record-breaking 1.681 million flights, the Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya reported.

“The traffic in upper airspace of the Russian Federation reached the record level of 1.681 million flights [of Russian and foreign airlines – TASS] in 12 months of 2018; growth versus the year of 2017 totaled 9.8%,” the regulator reports.

This is the all-time high figure of the post-Soviet development period of the national civil aviation, the authority says. The previous record was set in 2017 and amounted to 1.531 million flights.

According to data of the aviation regulator, air carriers made 811,353 domestic flights from January to December 2018, up 9.45% against 2017. Russian and international airlines completed 869,856 flights on international routes (+10.13%), of which 300,918 are transit flights across the Russian airspace (+6.91%)