Hunnu Air’s main route with Russia, which is in active demand, remains the Ulan-Ude-Ulaanbaatar flight. Strategy to reduce destinations from Buryatia in favor of other regions of Russia so far played in the negative for the Mongolian airline.
Due to low load, the Mongolian airline Hunnu Air closed the Ulaanbaatar-Khabarovsk charter program and canceled all flights. The direction turned out to be not as popular as foreign partners expected. Earlier, the carrier announced the completion of flights until May 31, although the press service of the Khabarovsk airport announced plans to extend the charter until August 31. In addition, tickets were available until the end of the summer.
Note that the company does not hesitate to arbitrarily change the schedule of flights (as well as the price of tickets), which creates great inconvenience for both Mongolian and Russian passengers.
Flights on the route Ulaanbaatar — Khabarovsk — Ulaanbaatar, the Mongolian carrier began to operate weekly from February 18. Initially, flights were planned until the end of the winter schedule, but they were repeatedly extended. However, the hopes were not justified: since the beginning of the flights, only 1,750 passengers have taken advantage of the charter program, as the press service of the Khabarovsk airport reported. Based on the layout of the Embraer-190 aircraft operating on the route, the carrying capacity of the realized part of the trip is 1372 seats in one direction or 2744 seats in both directions. Consequently, the loading of Hunnu Air’s boards was 63.8% on the entire route, which is extremely unprofitable for the carrier.
Apparently, the final decision was made by the company after analyzing the demand for the charter program in the summer season. It is noted that already purchased tickets can be replaced with tickets for flights Khabarovsk – Ulan-Ude (Aurora Airlines) and Ulan-Ude – Ulaanbaatar (Hunnu Air). If a flight with a transfer does not suit the passenger, then he can return the money spent at the place where the tickets were purchased.
At the same time, passengers from Buryatia complain on social networks that having only two flights is not very convenient: complete, and summer tickets are actively sold out. It should be noted that for actually an hour of flight, local residents will have to spend half their salary (16-17 thousand rubles), regardless of which summer month to take a ticket. But people are willing to spend so much money on a trip, judging by the demand. Babr previously suggested that high ticket prices were the main reason for Hunnu Air’s reduced workload.
Recall that flights to Ulaanbaatar from the beginning of 2023 began to decline. Hunnu Air has canceled flights on Wednesdays since January 11, 2023, and on Mondays since January 16, 2023 due to incomplete occupancy in favor of opening new destinations in other cities. Even then it was obvious that this was a failed strategy.
However, Baikal Airport CEO Dmitry Garmaev had no influence on the Mongolian partners and could not convince them that lowering the price of flights while maintaining four or five flights a week would be a profitable solution for Hunnu Air. Now it would not hurt to add additional flights to the Buryat direction at least until 2024, when the carrier will begin testing flights from Kyzyl, which are predicted to have a bright future due to the city’s more convenient location for residents of Siberia and the western part of Russia and due to the connection of Mongolian flights with flight Krasnoyarsk — Kyzyl.
Babr will continue to closely monitor developments.
Previously on Babra:
Success inside, failure outside: Baikal Airport report for the first quarter of 2023
At the peak of the east turn. Ulan-Ude will compete with Kyzyl for Mongolia
Photo: hunnuair.com
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