Babyflot is the informal name given to any airline in the former Soviet Union created in the early 1990s from the dissolution of the Soviet airline monopoly held by Aeroflot, at the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union. The word is a portmanteau of baby and Aeroflot (compare Baby Bells).
In 1992 Aeroflot was divided into more than 300 regional and other smaller airlines, with many being single-plane operations. International routes were operated separately as Aeroflot—Russian International Airlines (ARIA). [1] Some airline companies created from the old Aeroflot are now flag carriers of independent post-Soviet countries, such as Uzbekistan Airlines.
There were over 846 such airlines at one time with many of them subsequently closing down due to abysmal safety records in 1994. 118 carriers went out of business because fewer passengers could afford to fly in 1995.
By 2000, Russia had only about eight federal air carriers and 40 to 45 regional airlines – down sharply from the current 315 carriers, said Ivan Valov, first deputy chief of the Russian Federal Aviation Service. The government began to restrict licensing and certification and bring air-safety standards into compliance with international standards. The "Babyflot" airlines have been blamed for a sharp decline in Russia's air safety. Many of the crashes that occurred have been blamed on poor maintenance and lax controls at many small carriers, which have neglected flight safety in their run for profit. [2]
The eight hundred-odd "Babyflot" airlines had such poor safety records that in 1994 the International Air Transport Association took the unusual step of recommending train travel as the least life-threatening form of conveyance in the former Soviet Union. [3]
PJSC Aeroflot – Russian Airlines, commonly known as Aeroflot, is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its hub being Sheremetyevo International Airport. The Federal Agency for State Property Management, an agency of the Government of Russia, owns 73.77% of the company, with the rest of the shares being public float.
The Tupolev Tu-134 is a twin-engined, narrow-body jet airliner built in the Soviet Union for short and medium-haul routes from 1966 to 1989. The original version featured a glazed-nose design and, like certain other Russian airliners, it can operate from unpaved airfields.
The Ilyushin Il-62 is a Soviet long-range narrow-body jetliner conceived in 1960 by Ilyushin. As a successor to the popular turboprop Il-18 and with capacity for almost 200 passengers and crew, the Il-62 was the world's largest jet airliner when first flown in 1963. The seventh quad-engined, long-range jet airliner to fly, it was the first such type to be operated by the Soviet Union and a number of allied nations.
The Tupolev Tu-154 is a three-engined, medium-range, narrow-body airliner designed in the mid-1960s and manufactured by Tupolev. A workhorse of Soviet and (subsequently) Russian airlines for several decades, it carried half of all passengers flown by Aeroflot and its subsidiaries, remaining the standard domestic-route airliner of Russia and former Soviet states until the mid-2000s. It was exported to 17 non-Russian airlines and used as a head-of-state transport by the air forces of several countries.
Pulkovo Airport is an international airport serving St. Petersburg, Russia. It consists of one terminal which is located 23 km (14 mi) south of the city centre. The airport serves as a hub for Rossiya Airlines and as focus city for Smartavia. It is responsible for serving the citizens of Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast: a total of 6,120,000 people. It is the 29th-busiest airport in Europe in 2022.
JSC Uzbekistan Airways, operating as Uzbekistan Airways, is the flag carrier of Uzbekistan, headquartered in Tashkent. From its hub at Islam Karimov Tashkent International Airport, the airline serves a number of domestic destinations; the company also flies international services to Asia, Europe and North America.
Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport is situated in the town of Ob, 16 kilometres (9.9 mi) west of the center of Novosibirsk, an industrial and scientific center in Siberia and Russia's third-largest city.
S7 Airlines, legal name JSC Siberia Airlines, is an airline headquartered in Ob, Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia, with offices in Moscow. As of 2008, it was Russia's largest domestic airline, with its main bases at Domodedovo International Airport and Tolmachevo Airport. It is a member of the Oneworld alliance but its membership is currently suspended due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
JSC "Donavia" was an Aeroflot subsidiary airline based in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Its main bases were Rostov-on-Don Airport and Mineralnye Vody Airport after the Kavminvodyavia bankruptcy. It was known as Aeroflot-Don from 2000–2009. In the spring of 2016, its operations and aircraft were merged into sister company Rossiya.
Air Astana is an airline and the flag carrier of Kazakhstan. Based in Almaty, the airline was founded by the Government of Kazakhstan’s sovereign wealth fund Samruk Kazyna (51%) and BAE Systems (49%) and commenced operations on 15 May 2002. In February 2024 it became a dual listed company, being listed on the Kazakhstan and London stock exchanges. It is the largest airline in Central Asia and the Caucasus region with 69% and 40% of market share on domestic and intra-regional routes from Kazakhstan.
Irkutsk International Airport is an international airport on the outskirts of Irkutsk, Russia, at a distance of 60 kilometers from Lake Baikal.
Almaty International Airport is the largest international airport of Kazakhstan, surpassing Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport (NQZ) in Astana and the largest international gateway into the country. It is also the principal hub of Air Astana, the national flag carrier. It serves Almaty, the largest and most populous city in the country, and, with its surface transport links, much of the rest of the country.
Anapa Airport, also known as Vityazevo Airport is an international airport located near Vityazevo village in Anapa, Russia. It serves the resort town of Anapa, as well as Novorossiysk and Temryuk with a total population of over 400,000 people.
Emperor Nicholas II Murmansk Airport is an international airport serving the city Murmansk in Russia. It is located near the town of Murmashi in Murmansk's southern suburbs, 24 kilometres (15 mi) outside the city centre. It serves as the airline hub for Smartavia.
Ignatyevo Airport is an international airport in Amur Oblast, Russia, located near the village of Ignatyevo 20 kilometers (12 mi) north-west of Blagoveshchensk. The large airport services up to medium-sized airliners with parking space for 44 civilian aircraft, and conducts 24-hour flight operation. Ignatyevo Airport is state-owned by Amur Oblast and jointly operated with the Russian Air Force, with a military pad on the north-west side of the airport.
A polar route is an aircraft route across the uninhabited polar ice cap regions. The term "polar route" was originally applied to great circle navigation routes between Europe and the west coast of North America in the 1950s.
Semeyavia O.A. was an airline based in Semey, Kazakhstan, operating scheduled domestic flights between its home base at Semey Airport and Almaty International Airport. Ceased operations in July 2013.
Vnukovo Airlines was a Russian airline which had its corporate headquarters at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow. It was created as a spin-off from the Vnukovo Airport division of Aeroflot in March 1993 and operated until 2001, when it was bought by Siberian Airlines.
Transport in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was an important part of the nation's economy. The economic centralisation of the late 1920s and 1930s led to the development of infrastructure at a massive scale and rapid pace. Before the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, there were a wide variety of modes of transport by land, water and air. However, because of government policies before, during and after the Era of Stagnation, investments in transport were low. By the late 1970s and early 1980s Soviet economists were calling for the construction of more roads to alleviate some of the strain from the railways and to improve the state budget. The civil aviation industry, represented by Aeroflot, was the largest in the world, but inefficiencies plagued it until the USSR's collapse. The road network remained underdeveloped, and dirt roads were common outside major cities. At the same time, the attendance of the few roads they had were ill-equipped to handle this growing problem. By the late-1980s, after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, his successors tried, without success, to solve these problems. At the same time, the automobile industry was growing at a faster rate than the construction of new roads. By the mid-1970s, only 0.8 percent of the Soviet population owned a car.