Dobrolet (Moscow Sheremetyevo) will officially launch operations on June 12 with a 4x daily service between Moscow Sheremetyevo and Simferopol in Crimea. The ITAR TASS newswire reports demand for tickets has been strong with almost 4'000 having been sold in the first 12 hours.
Aeroflot (SU, Moscow Sheremetyevo) Director General and CEO, Vitaly Savelyev, said additional routes were also being considered.
"We're also considering St. Petersburg, Sochi, and Kaliningrad but for the meantime we will only fly to Simferopol," he told a news conference.
Having secured its Air Operators Certificate (AOC) earlier this month, the LCC's fleet currently consists of two B737-800s and a SSJ 100/95 with plans to increase the number to eight aircraft by year-end.
Following his country's unilateral annexation of the peninsula in March, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev says that by June 1, Crimea will be directly connected to 30 cities in Russia as compared to seven in 2013, when the territory was still under Ukrainian control.
