Pulkovo St. Petersburg Airport will launch new international and domestic routes in the IATA Summer season 2019. The airport operator Northern Capital Gateway (NCG) and the airlines announced the upcoming additions to the schedule on March 1, 2019, at the traditional summer season routes presentation.

New Routes

In the upcoming summer season, direct service to at least eight new destinations will commence from Pulkovo, all new to St. Petersburg airport's schedule. The new carrier at Pulkovo, SunExpress, will launch flights from the Northern capital of Russia to the resort city of Izmir on the Aegean Sea (Turkey). S7 Airlines will launch scheduled direct service from Pulkovo to the Russian city of Irkutsk, as well as to the Mediterranean resorts - Olbia (Italy) and Palma de Mallorca (Spain).

The network of long-haul flights for the summer season 2019 will receive additional service from St. Petersburg to the Chinese destinations of Fuzhou and Hangzhou. Flights will be operated by iFly Airlines.

New routes for the upcoming summer season will also include domestic destinations: Elista (Azimuth), Nizhnevartovsk (UTair).

Additional Flights

During the summer navigation of 2019, many carriers plan to launch flights to new points in their route networks and increase the frequencies on popular flight destinations. S7 Airlines will continue to expand its presence at Pulkovo. The carrier is planning to provide service from St. Petersburg to the new European cities of Barcelona (Spain) and Nice (France), as well as the Russian cities of Anapa and Sochi. Russian low-cost carrier Pobeda will increase its presence on the domestic routes. Among the airline's new additions is the launch of flights from Pulkovo to the Russian cities of Anapa and Kazan. In addition, Pobeda will increase the frequency of service from St. Petersburg to Cheboksary, Kirov, Krasnodar, Sochi.

In the upcoming summer season, passengers of Pulkovo Airport will be provided with additional domestic flights to Ivanovo, Kaluga, Orenburg, Tyumen, Ufa, as well as to popular Russian resorts - Anapa, Simferopol, and Sochi.

Finnair is planning to add the fourth daily flight to its schedule on the St. Petersburg - Helsinki route. Airlines will also increase the frequency of service to popular European destinations: Turkish Airlines to Antalya (from 7 to 14 per week), Brussels Airlines to Brussels (from 3 to 4 per week), Wizz Air to Budapest (from 4 to 5 in a week). Additionally, there will be an increase in the frequencies of flights from St. Petersburg to Alicante (S7 Airlines) and Minsk (Belavia).

During the summer season 2019, the new airline at Pulkovo Airport, Voyage Air, will operate charter flights from St. Petersburg to Varna (Bulgaria). In addition, there will be an increase in the frequency of charter flights to the Northern capital of Russia from Tehran (Iran).

In January 2019, Pulkovo Airport served 1.2 million people, which is 14% more than in the same period of 2018. Domestic passenger traffic increased by 14.4% to 841.6 thousand people. On international routes, traffic increased by 13.1% to 388.6 thousand people.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the northern summer season begins on the date of Daylight Saving Time (DST) introduction in European Union countries, which currently always takes place on the last Sunday in March. The northern winter season commences on the date Daylight Saving Time (DST) ends in European Union countries, which currently always takes place on the last Sunday in October. Thus, the IATA Summer season 2019 will begin on March 31, 2019, and last through October 26, 2019, inclusive.

Pulkovo St. Petersburg Airport is the fourth airport in Russia in terms of passenger numbers. In 2019, Pulkovo, for the fourth year in a row, became the winner of the national 'Air Gates of Russia' award, according to the passengers' votes. Since 2010, Northern Capital Gateway LLC has been the main operator of Pulkovo, implementing the airport reconstruction and development project under a public-private partnership agreement with the city of St. Petersburg.

Contributed by Pulkovo St. Petersburg Airport