Krasnodar, 2 October – Yug Times. Russian travellers prefer to save their time and money by flying to the Black Sea resorts rather than going there by train.
According to statistics, over the past eight months of this year the airports of Sochi, Krasnodar and Anapa received 9.3 million passengers, which is comparable with the number of the passengers coming to Sochi, Adler, Krasnodar, Anapa, Lazarevskoe, Tuapse and Novorossiysk by train. What is more, the air tickets often cost the same as the train tickets, with obvious saving of time.
Then why do some people still prefer trains? Experts believe that these are two different categories of passengers, coming from different departure points.
Currently, there are four airports in Krasnodar province, of which three are international hubs and one – Gelendzhik – flies 0nly national lines. Sochi is the most visited airport; its passenger turnover was 4.7 million over the first eight months of the year, which was by 7% more than for the same period of 2018 (4.44 million passengers).
The second most popular airport of the region is Krasnodar. It received 3 million passengers for the first eight months of the year (by 11% more than for the same period of last year – 2.76 million). Anapa Airport welcomed 1.24 million passengers in January – August 2019 (by 13% more than for the same period of 2018). Gelendzhik also set its record – over 300,000 passengers.
Daria Toropova, Travelata.ru Customer Department Head, states that currently it is package tourism bound with air transportation is the most developing kind of holidaymaking activities. According to her, the travel agencies launch charter flights to make package tours cheaper, which is why air conveyance is becoming more popular. On the other hand, rail transport is being used by individual holidaymakers who tend to put up at private accommodations rather than hotels or spas.
Besides, the price for air and train tickets has of late become quite comparable, but the speed of the trains has not. Say, a ticket in a third-class (‘platzkarte’) sleeper from Moscow to Adler in October would cost about 2,000 roubles; in a compartment sleeper – 3,000 to 4,000 roubles; and in a first-class saloon – from 7,000 to 13,000 roubles. The duration of the journey would be from 23 to 40 hours. At the same time, an air ticket from Moscow to Sochi may cost starting from 1,500 roubles in the economy class. The flight would last for a little more than two hours only.
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