The number of passengers carried by Russian airlines in August 2017 increased by 16.7% year-on-year to 12.018 million, the Federal Air Transport Agency (FATA) reports. The growth rate slowed down compared to July’s 19%. The international segment was still growing faster (+34.5% to 4.989 million passengers) than the domestic market (+6.6% to 7.029 million), but somewhat slowed down from July’s 38.3% (compared to 8.1% on domestic flights).

The average seat load factor continued to grow in August, by 0.5 p.p. to 89.9%. The indicator was higher on international flights,growing 0.6 percentage points to 90.7%, whereas on domestic flights it grew 0.3 percentage points to 89%.

FATA’s August report was distinct in that it provided separate statistics on scheduled and charter flights. According to the document, 81.9% of all passengers serrved by Russian airlines traveled on scheduled flights. Predictibly, the share of charter passengers was higher in the international segment, at 37.4%, whereas inside Russia just 4.4% of all traffic was carried on charter flights.

Available statistics for the first eight months of the year show a slightly different picture: just 15.1% of all passengers carried by Russian airlines used charter flights.