Russia's flagship air carrier Aeroflot will create budget and charter airlines in order to increase four-fold its passenger traffic by 2025, a business daily said on Wednesday.
In April, Aeroflot announced its plans to create a budget airline on the basis of six smaller airlines that merged with the company in February.
Orenburg Airlines is likely to take up the role of Aeroflot's charter subsidiary.
Like Germany's Lufthansa airline, Aeroflot plans to move into all areas of the market in order to increase its revenues by 2025 to $18 billion from $4.5 billion and passenger traffic to 79.5 million people from current 19.9 million, the Vedomosti daily said.
Aeroflot's strategy takes account of the fact that regular flights do not permit a rapid expansion of passenger traffic, Vedomosti cited an analyst from VTB Capital, the investment division of VTB Group, Georgy Tarakanov, as saying.
Tarakanov said Aeroflot's plans were too optimistic.
"A lack of pilots, planes and airport capacity will hinder the company's plans," Tarakanov told Vedomosti.
Many large airlines often create discount subsidiaries under a parent company. Germany's Lufthansa has budget airline Germanwings, and one of the leading U.S. air carriers, Delta, owns the Song budget subsidiary.
MOSCOW, September 29 (RIA Novosti)
