Originally Posted by nomad1974

Resurrecting an oldish thread so as to keep things tidy.

Monday December 21, 2009

Transaero Airlines is discussing increasing its cooperation with Star Alliance (it currently codeshares with Austrian Airlines and bmi) and would consider full membership, although DG Olga Pleshakova said this currently is "not the top priority," Vienna's Der Standard reported. Transaero is the most obvious Russian target for Star since Aeroflot is a member of SkyTeam and S7 Airlines is set to join oneworld. Pleshakova claimed Transaero has weathered the downturn more effectively than its rivals. While passenger numbers have dropped 12% during the recession, the carrier reported a 1.4% year-over-year growth in passengers during the first 11 months of 2009 to 4.7 million. Traffic measured in RPKs climbed 4.4% and surged 70.7% on domestic routes. It flew 1.67 billion total RPKs in November, up 23.6% year-over-year, while passenger numbers soared 26.9% to 381,000, it said. It operates 24 domestic routes, half of which were launched this year.

Source: http://www.atwonline.com/news/other....12%2F21%2F2009