Russians Abandon Flights for Trains as Drone Disruptions Paralyze Major Airports

Russians are increasingly abandoning flights between Moscow and St. Petersburg as repeated drone attacks and airport shutdowns make air travel less predictable, pushing passengers—especially business travelers—toward high-speed trains, according to Russian media Kommersant on August 6.

Passenger traffic on flights between Russia’s two largest cities fell 18% year over year during the first half of 2026, dropping to 1.6 million people, Kommersant reported, citing aviation industry sources.

The decline was far steeper than the broader downturn in Russian air travel. Nationwide airline traffic fell 3.2% to 49.2 million passengers between January and June, according to Russia’s state statistics agency. In June alone, the decline accelerated to 7.6%, with airlines carrying 9.6 million passengers.

St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport said in December 2025 that it had already lost around 15% of its passenger traffic on Moscow routes because of recurring closures prompted by drone raids.

Business travel has been hit particularly hard. Aeroclub, a major Russian corporate travel operator, estimated that demand for flights between Moscow and St. Petersburg fell 23% during the first six months of 2026.

At the same time, demand for rail travel on the route rose 20%. Trains now account for 70% of business trips between the two cities, up from 61%, with high-speed services handling 90% of those journeys.

Read more

Category

World

Russia Built a Passenger Plane Without Foreign Parts. Now It Can’t Fly in Rain, Heat, Cold, or Storms

Jul 09, 2026 16:48

Russian Railways said approximately seven million passengers traveled between Moscow and St. Petersburg during the first seven months of 2026, roughly unchanged from last year. More than 3.1 million used the high-speed Sapsan service.

Flights on the route are currently operated by Aeroflot, its subsidiaries Pobeda and Rossiya, as well as S7 Airlines and Azimuth.

Aeroflot acknowledged a “slight decline in passenger traffic” during the first half of the year but did not disclose detailed figures. The airline said it had reduced frequencies before the summer season and reassigned aircraft to other routes with stronger demand.

S7, by contrast, reported a 17% rise in passenger numbers after increasing its Moscow–St. Petersburg schedule from two to three flights per day. Azimuth declined to comment.

Andrey Kramarenko, a senior researcher at the Higher School of Economics’ Institute for Transport Economics, estimated that broader weakness in domestic air travel accounted for roughly four percentage points of the route’s decline.

He attributed as much as eight percentage points to passengers switching to trains, “where the probability of arriving on time is much higher.”

Read more

Category

World

Why Moscow Pilots Sounded Alarm Over Russia’s Use of Airports

May 19, 2026 16:16

Airport shutdowns caused by drone attacks may account for another seven percentage points, he said.

The figures suggest that repeated airspace closures are no longer causing only temporary delays. They are beginning to reshape travel habits on one of Russia’s most important domestic routes, with passengers increasingly choosing the railway over the risk of being stranded at a closed airport.

Earlier, reports emerged that Russia was considering restoring up to 700 Soviet-era An-2 aircraft currently in storage after efforts to develop a modern replacement failed.

Since 2024, Russian authorities have already returned 16 out of 51 stored An-2 aircraft to service, even though those planes had previously been slated for scrapping.

Help Ukrainian Units Hold the Drone Line

Download APP