Discussion Papers 2010. No. 80.
Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
CENTRE FOR REGIONAL STUDIES
OF HUNGARIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
DISCUSSION PAPERS
No. 80
Closing up, Keeping up or
Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences
of Air Transport in Eastern Europe
by
Ferenc ERDėSI
Series editor
Gábor LUX
Pécs
2010
Discussion Papers 2010. No. 80.
Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
ISSN 0238–2008
ISBN 978 963 9899 33 9
© Ferenc ErdĘsi
© Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
2010 by Centre for Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Technical editor: Ilona Csapó.
Printed in Hungary by Sümegi Nyomdaipari, Kereskedelmi és Szolgáltató Ltd., Pécs.
Discussion Papers 2010. No. 80.
Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
CONTENTS
1 The regional characteristics of the relatively well progressing advancement................ 5
1.1 The beginnings of aviation between the two world wars....................................... 6
1.2 Soviet-type air transport in COMECON countries in the state socialist
period..................................................................................................................... 7
1.2.1 State-owned airlines influenced by COMECON contracts ........................ 7
1.2.2 The contradiction between the relatively dense airport network and
the outdated air fleet encumbering inter-continental airline
connection ................................................................................................ 12
1.2.3 Domestic air transport as an indirect social benefit.................................. 13
1.2.4 International air transport: an extensive network with few
passengers................................................................................................. 17
2 From torso to a success sector: Changes in air transport during the regime change
and after the collapse of the former state formations until the 21st century ................. 18
2.1 The polarisation of development by macro-regions/country blocs...................... 18
2.1.1 From over-sized (?) to slimmed and strongly segmented air
transport in CIS countries......................................................................... 18
2.1.2 A promising experiment for closing up to the increasing demand
and for quality improvement in Visegrad Four Countries and in
the Baltic States ........................................................................................ 20
2.2 The harmonisation of the air transport system of Eastern Central Europe
with the transport policy of the European Community/Union in organ-
isational restructuring and technical modernisation............................................. 21
2.2.1 The slow progress of liberalisation/deregulation and privatisation,
the problems of development ................................................................... 21
2.2.2 The (transitory?) role of the European Community in the retrieving
the losses of air transport in Eastern Europe ............................................ 24
2.2.3 The uneven and partial modernisation of air fleets – the replacement
of Soviet-made aircraft into western ones ................................................ 27
3 An abundance of airlines – moderately growing air fleets – low intensity
airlines ........................................................................................................................ 30
3.1 The distribution of the air fleet of airlines by service types
and traffic volume................................................................................................ 30
3.2 The increasing role of discount (‘low-cost’) carriers in the air transport of
Eastern Central Europe and the Baltic Region, their possible emergence in
CIS countries ....................................................................................................... 33
3.3 The spatial characteristics of airport supply ........................................................ 35
References........................................................................................................................ 44
Discussion Papers 2010. No. 80.
Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
List of figures
Figure 1 The domestic airline network of Eastern Central European
countries in 1959............................................................................................ 15
List of tables
Table 1
The percentage of the national airlines of COMECON member states
from the total volume of passenger traffic and distance in the COMECON
block in years 1971/1972 ................................................................................. 9
Table 2
The percentage of the national airlines of COMECON member states in
the total volume of cargo weight traffic and cargo weight delivery distance
traffic in the years 1971/1972 ........................................................................ 11
Table 3
The major tasks of the transformation of air transport in the different
country blocks of Eastern Europe .................................................................. 22
Table 4
EU grants allocated for the development of Eastern European economy
and herein the development of the air transport sector in million ECU,
1993–1996...................................................................................................... 26
Table 5
The total and relative passenger traffic of the countries of Central and
Eastern Europe in 2005 .................................................................................. 32
Table 6
The public airport supply/density of countries............................................... 37
Table 7
The division of the scheduled airline traffic volume of some Eastern
European airports by continent destinations in year 2002.............................. 40
Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
1 The regional characteristics of the relatively well progressing
advancement
Transport in Eastern Europe – particularly Eastern European aviation – is terra
incognita for most Hungarian experts. Although we have managed to get rid of
our Eastern European mindedness in some aspects, we should still be aware of
our geographical determinations: in a geographical sense, we do not belong to
Western Europe even if our international transport connections are asymmetric,
indicating a stronger orientation towards Western Europe. Concerning our future,
it has really great importance
− how extensive and how intensive our economic, cultural and transport rela-
tions will be with the post-socialist countries, which in several respects offer
for us better market opportunities than Western European ones;
− furthermore, how successful will Hungary be in playing an intermediary and
transit role between Western and Eastern Europe.
For positioning ourselves in a realistic way and for finding a suitable place in
the European, particularly Eastern European transport space, we need comprehen-
sive information on the transport of macro-regions and blocks of countries. This
three-part paper aims to provide a presentation on the spatial differences emerging
in the different periods of the evolution of aviation.
The development process of aviation in Eastern Europe had variable dynamic
and static characteristics compared to that of advanced economies (principally
Western Europe and Northern America). In our development programmes, the
fulfilment of closing up-objectives can be guaranteed in advance, but the time
spans to achieve them are unpredictable. The best results achieved so far have
amounted to keeping up for short periods (and perhaps in certain fields gaining
some advantages in the speed of development), but after the regime change, the
threat of lagging behind was dominant.
However, Eastern Europe is not a homogenous area in the field of air transport
– based on using homogenous air space without predefined flight tracks – but
rather a mixture of country blocks or even individual countries showing special
features inherited from differing ways of historical development. For under-
standing the major problems of our contemporary situation, it is necessary to pro-
vide an outline of trends having been formulated 50 years before the regime
change but still impacting the current development process.
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
1.1 The beginnings of aviation between the two world wars
In Eastern Europe, although it was lagging behind the Western part of the conti-
nent, after an experimental period, regular airline services carrying mostly pas-
sengers and mail were launched only a few years later than in Western Europe. In
socialist countries excluding the Soviet Union, air passenger services at the turn
of the 1920/1930s were provided mostly by foreign airlines using small-capacity
old planes converted to civilian use after World War I. As the introduction of air
services coincided with the years of the Great Depression, it can be stated that this
newborn branch of transport was rather resistant to economic cycles and incomes
(considering people with average incomes were willing to pay high sums for trav-
elling comfortably and quickly).
By the 1930s, especially the years preceding World War II, most countries had
already introduced their scheduled airline services covering a small network of
destinations. They were generally serviced by a series of newly founded national
airlines (LOT, SA, Aeroput, Ares etc.), but their fleets with minor exceptions
consisted of aircraft purchased or leased from Western European (German, Eng-
lish, French etc.) or sometimes American manufacturers, and equipped with a
dozen, or maximum two or three dozen passenger seats.
The situation was completely different in the Soviet Union. A country cover-
ing two continents, bridging large distances and making the apparatchiks’ – civil
servants of central administration/government offices – trips faster and more com-
fortable between the member states, the Soviet Union committed enormous re-
sources to building an extensive airline network compared to its financial circum-
stances, and used domestically manufactured aircraft in the ranks of Aeroflot, the
giant state company.
In the countries of our research area, international air services before World
War II were dominated by destinations of „historical sympathy”, or interests
based on historical relations between countries. Poland and Czechoslovakia had
strong preference towards airline connections with France and Great Britain,
while Hungary had the same attitude towards Germany and Italy. In air transport,
Eastern Central Europe took a central position. The value of our location was
further increased by the transit airline services connecting Northern Europe with
Southern Europe or Western Europe with the Soviet Union, South-Eastern Europe
and Asia, providing an easy access to the remote countries of the continent or of
the world by linking East-Central Europe to the global network of transcontinen-
tal or international airlines.
In the period when due to technical reasons the low-range aircraft of the pas-
senger service were only able to cover a few hundred kilometres without refuel-
ling, the airports of Prague, Budapest, Belgrade and to a less extent Warsaw, Bu-
charest and Sofia had an indispensable role by functioning as refuelling, technical
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
inspection and technical servicing stations in the air traffic between Western
Europe and Asia as well as between Northern Europe and Africa. However, these
(capital city) airports had less impact on the passenger traffic of trans- and inter-
continental airlines because only few passengers departed or arrived at these des-
tinations.
Although the annual traffic of airline passengers was only a few thousand in
each country preceding the Second World War (in 1938 Poland had 6,800,
Czechoslovakia 7,920, Hungary 5,400, Romania 2,607, Yugoslavia 6,340, the
Soviet Union 68,000 airline passengers), and such kind of travel was still re-
garded as a luxury trip, air services were already delivered by multi-engine air-
craft with double or triple boarding capacity compared to ten years before, just
like in the economically more advanced countries. Capital cities and some major
cities had already built airports with modern passenger facilities and concrete
runways by 1936.
Scheduled domestic airline services did not prove viable in Hungary due to the
country’s small territory, but they did in Czechoslovakia in the East-West direc-
tion, and even more so in Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia, countries with dis-
tances of several hundred kilometres. There, capital cities served as nodes for
airline operators – though some lines only had one or two scheduled round trip
flights per week.
1.2 Soviet-type air transport in COMECON countries
in the state socialist period
Between 1945 and the regime change (i.e. the collapse of the Soviet Union), East-
ern European air transport was much more influenced by the state socialist politi-
cal/economic system than any other (country size, physical geography, technical,
transport network) factor.
1.2.1 State-owned airlines influenced by COMECON contracts
The historical background of the foundation of airlines was determined by the
situation emerging after World War II. The Soviet Union made great efforts to
utilise its redundant troop and supply carrier aircraft and maintain their production
capacity. For this reason, by pressuring the governments of Eastern Central
Europe who had fallen into the Soviet sphere of influence, the Russians founded
airlines of joint (partially Soviet) ownership, and with the assistance of a large
amount of state support, they created an extensive international and domestic
airline network in a few years’ time in all these countries (excluding Yugoslavia)
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
based on Soviet-made Li–2, IL–14 and An model aircraft capable of landing even
on grass airfields. It was only in the mid-1950s when national airlines became
formally independent, as with the consent of the Soviet side they bought out the
assets of the Soviets and in this way put an end to joint corporations.
It was not only partial isolation from the Western world but also a series of
commitments implied by COMECON membership such as the socialist type of
economy and its rigid corporate system that hindered the development of air
transport in socialist countries. The organisational scheme of air transport was
dominated by ideology-driven politics and COMECON-ruled national authorities.
The operation and management of state-run airlines was heavily influenced by
state monopolies created by the government. This was the case even if state en-
terprises were following the organisational model of commercial organisations,
and to a certain extent had to enter the inter-sectoral (inter-modal) competition of
transport subclasses. However, they were forced to get rid of the rigidity of their
system when they were operating in western markets. In the inevitable competi-
tion with western airlines, the modus vivendi was necessarily adaptation to the
demands of western markets. Therefore, the ideologically bound “socialist” air-
lines could do nothing but lead a Janus-faced business policy.
Just as in other fields of the socialist economy, the performance standards of
air transport were set by the directives of the centrally planned economy. The
system was doing its best to forecast both the demand and supply side of air
transport within the framework of a state planning system, and was also making
efforts to harmonise them with other sectors of the national economy.
The co-ordinating tasks of the state increased with COMECON commitments
as negotiations with the other countries’ air transport authorities became neces-
sary for each COMECON member state. The multilateral cooperation of
COMECON members implied the most important tasks in the field of transport.
However, for experts, the largest problem was that the strategic policies of
„socialist integration” were not clearly defined even in the basic rules (unlike in
the European Economic Community or „Common Market”).
Integration as a term was described by socialist economic policymakers rather
vaguely as a conscious and planned process shaped by communist parties and
governments on the grounds of the socialist division of labour. During this proc-
ess, the COMECON’s “Complex Programme” stipulated a series of partial objec-
tives of air transport policy to realise such as
− the improvement and enlargement of international airline networks,
− the supply of COMECON member states’ aircraft board instruments and
ground equipment demands from own resources/manufacturing,
− specialisation in aircraft and engine repairs,
− elaborating efficient methods for the collective training of aircraft, technical
and air security personnel,
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The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
− improving the supply system of aircraft components and engines,
− introducing new and more efficient methods in the technical maintenance of
aircraft.
In the 1970s in the total air passenger traffic of COMECON countries, the So-
viet Aeroflot was followed in both the number of passengers and the distance
volume by the German INTERFLUG and the Czechoslovakian airlines. The
ranking of the traffic volume of airlines was independent of the number of in-
habitants, country size and even the absolute volume of GDP. Neither the number
of passengers nor the volume of distance covered correlated with the number of
destinations in domestic or international airline networks (Table 1).
Table 1
The percentage of the national airlines of COMECON member states from the
total volume of passenger traffic and distance in the COMECON block in years
1971/1972*, %
Airline
Passenger traffic percentage
Distance volume percentage
1971
1972
1971
1972
AEROFLOT
23.82
25.12
31.56
35.77
INTERFLUG
32.72
31.88
28.92
26.11
SA
16.27
15.80
16.28
14.70
BALKAN
9.53
9.76
10.90
11.02
LOT
7.83
7.41
4.41
4.76
MALÉV
6.02
5.66
4.82
4.27
TAROM
3.50
4.04
2.99
3.25
AIR MONGOL
0.31
0.33
0.12
0.12
Total
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
* Excluding Yugoslavia and Cuba.
Source: Kneifel, 1980.
As the easing pressure of dictatorships in most socialist countries gave way to
the ability to travel to foreign countries, the increasing demand also increased the
volume of traffic in all countries. Some transitory fallbacks in travel were gener-
ated by certain shocking/critical political situations only such as the 1956 revolu-
tion in Hungary, the Prague Spring in 1968 in Czechoslovakia and the political
state of emergency in Poland in 1981.
Regarding the increase in total (domestic and international) traffic volume,
even in the 1970/1980s there was no significant difference among the country
blocs of Eastern Europe (the Soviet Slavic countries, the countries of the Soviet
Baltic Region, the countries of Eastern Central Europe, the Soviet-oriented satel-
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
lite states of the Eastern Balkans and the politically quasi-independent Yugosla-
via). There were much more significant differences in
− the ratios of domestic and international traffic,
− the ratios of capital city orientated traffic and
− the importance of cargo traffic.
The ratio of domestic traffic was still the highest in the Soviet Union while
Hungarian airspace had international civilian airline traffic only. Accessing
Western Europe or any other “capitalist state” from the Baltic States and Molda-
via was only possible through a transfer in Moscow or Leningrad as they had
direct flight contacts with socialist countries only. Passenger traffic was limited to
the capital city in Hungary and Albania.
Airlines which – putting aside their ideological considerations – were orien-
tated towards markets outside the COMECON bloc just to increase their hard
currency revenues (LOT, MALÉV, TAROM and BALKAN) had a lower share in
air services delivered within the COMECON bloc.
The largest volume and share of revenues from air cargo traffic was achieved
by the Soviet Union, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. The national airlines’ share of
COMECON cargo traffic shows a similar order to that of passenger traffic with
such a difference that Aeroflot took by far the highest position in all kinds of
ranking (Table 2).
Table 2
The percentage of the national airlines of COMECON member states in the total
volume of cargo weight traffic and cargo weight delivery distance traffic
in the years 1971/1972*, %
Airline
Cargo weight percentage
Cargo weight delivery distance percentage
1971
1972
1971
1972
AEROFLOT
58.77
60.43
68.42
67.77
INTERFLUG
18.32
14.20
12.99
11.48
SA
5.10
4.13
3.95
3.75
BALKAN
5.06
9.28
4.91
10.99
LOT
7.32
6.90
5.89
3.02
MALÉV
2.18
1.98
1.43
1.07
TAROM
2.72
2.56
2.23
1.78
AIR MONGOL
0.62
0.52
0.18
0.14
Total
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
* Excluding Yugoslavia and Cuba.
Source: Kneifel, 1980.
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
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Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
The quality of air services (the accuracy of scheduled air services, the quality
of passenger cabins, board services, the booking/purchasing method of airline
tickets, the frequency of over-bookings, security/the frequency of accidents, air-
port circumstances) was gradually deteriorating when moving from West to East,
and proved to be the worst in Soviet Central Eastern Asia.
The absence of competition excluded the chances of service improvement as
the majority of socialist countries ran only a single national airline which had, at
best,
− territorial divisions (Aeroflot had more than ten regional divisions with
names referring to their area of service),
− divisions focused on a certain scope of activities/services (such as domestic
air service, charter services, cargo services), such as the Hemus Air division
of the BALKAN airline.
Table 2
The percentage of the national airlines of COMECON member states in the total
volume of cargo weight traffic and cargo weight delivery distance traffic
in the years 1971/1972*, %
Airline
Cargo weight percentage
Cargo weight delivery distance percentage
1971
1972
1971
1972
AEROFLOT
58.77
60.43
68.42
67.77
INTERFLUG
18.32
14.20
12.99
11.48
SA
5.10
4.13
3.95
3.75
BALKAN
5.06
9.28
4.91
10.99
LOT
7.32
6.90
5.89
3.02
MALÉV
2.18
1.98
1.43
1.07
TAROM
2.72
2.56
2.23
1.78
AIR MONGOL
0.62
0.52
0.18
0.14
Total
100.00
100.00
100.00
100.00
* Excluding Yugoslavia and Cuba.
Source: Kneifel, 1980.
The bilateral contracts made with foreign (western) airlines – which were
based on the principle of rendering services mutually benefiting both parties –
were also unhelpful for fostering competition.
In Central Europe, there were three major airports with the highest passenger
traffic, namely the Moscow air complex (with several member airports), Berlin-
Schönefeld in the German Democratic Republic, and Prague, the capital of
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
Czechoslovakia. They were followed by Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia
as the second group with lower passenger traffic. The third group included capital
city airports such as Tirana and Vilnius, and provincial city airports such as Er-
furt, Wroclaw, Poprad-Tatri etc.
The modernisation of the airports of large cities and the construction of con-
crete surface runways was made important by the emergence of turboprop and
more sensitive Soviet-made jet aircraft. The Soviet Union had even used its do-
mestically manufactured special aircraft model TU–114 in non-stop air service on
the Moscow–Soviet Far East mega airline.
1.2.2 The contradiction between the relatively dense airport network and the
outdated air fleet encumbering inter-continental airline connection
The manufacturing of Soviet type aircraft enjoyed a monopoly all over the mar-
kets of Central and Eastern Europe. Czechoslovakia, Poland and to a marginal
extent Romania had capacities for manufacturing small aircraft only. Following
the plans of Tupolev, Ilyusin, Antonov and Yakushin Moscow, the major cities of
Volga, Ukraine and Tashkent manufactured such Soviet type aircraft which in all
their technical/environmental parameters, effective range, reliability, servicing
demands and comfort level were left behind by the American and Western Euro-
pean models.
One of the greatest deficiencies of Soviet aircraft manufacturing was failing to
produce high range aeroplanes. Even the high capacity Russian „airbuses” (IL–
86, IL–96) were only suitable for transatlantic traffic at such places where the
distance was the shortest between Europe and North America, namely between
Shannon (Ireland) and Gander (Canada, New Foundland). The only Soviet-made
aircraft suitable for intercontinental services was the IL–62 model (which besides
the Aeroflot increased the value of the air fleet of LOT and SA).
Of the Soviet bloc countries, Czechoslovakia was the first trying to break the
Soviet monopoly during the 1968 „Prague Spring” era when SA purchased
some Bristol–Britannia aircraft – and it was followed by a Polish experiment
when LOT increased its fleet by Vickers–Viscount and Convarir–340 model
planes. Romania, keeping some distance from the Soviet Union and building
highly friendly contacts with China, went further, and thus TAROM permanently
operated British BAC–111, American B–707 and other Western model aircraft
which enabled the introduction of non-stop flight services between Romania and
China, the US and Central-Africa.
Of the former socialist countries, Yugoslavia was the most independent state in
all repects as it was not a member of the Warsaw Pact and had only an observer
role in the COMECON system. Yugoslavia had already replaced its fleet by the
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Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
1950s into Western made aircraft and as a major organiser of the federation of
non-aligned states, had built an extensive airline network not only in East-West
relations but also towards the developing countries.
In the mid-1980s, the late period of socialism, the contradictions in the air
transport infrastructure can be summarised in that the per unit (one million in-
habitants) provision of public airports was fit for Western European standards,
and in Eastern Central Europe the per unit territory (100 thousand km2) density of
airports was not far behind the Western European indices, which means that the
conditions of the geographical accessibility of air transport services were rela-
tively fair. However, the quality and utility value of aircraft were much more
lower not only in comparison with Western European, North American and Far-
Eastern ones, but they were also lagging behind the aircraft used in the less de-
veloped regions of the world.
The Soviet aircraft models proved to be more risky for accidents than the
western ones. The supersonic TU–144 model coming out simultaneously with the
British-French Concorde model became the victim of efforts to win the aerospace
race at any price. The six manufactured planes of this model had to be retired in
the 1980s following a series of accidents (they were flying between Moscow,
Central Asia and the Pacific Region). In case of Concorde, retirement only took
place in the early years of the 21st century.
However, air mobility, even using the low technical quality of the Soviet air
fleet (the number of air trips per 10 thousand inhabitants) was approaching or in
some areas slightly surpassing the relevant values in some less developed West-
ern European countries – mostly in Siberia and in the northern part of European
Russia where medium and long-range airline services were provided by (TU–134,
TU–154 model) Aeroflot planes, while in short-distance range the grassy airfields
were regularly used by AN–2 planes and helicopters carrying administrators and
head officers on their board.
1.2.3 Domestic air transport as an indirect social benefit
The socialist „planning economy” nearly violated the systemic features of air
transport in Western Europe and the rest of the world by transforming air planes –
in a very anachronistic way (by stepping very much off from the affordable real-
ity) – into a kind of public transport vehicle by creating a very dense network and
introducing extremely cheap fare prices (covering only 8–10% of the total run-
ning costs) and cargo tariffs, as well as by providing an extremely high level of
state subsidisation in compensation.
It is obvious that administrating a Soviet Empire of an enormous size (22.1
million square kilometres) without any railway or road connections on the major-
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Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
ity of its territory and consisting of 15 member republics and several hundred
special (ethnic minority) districts/regions, the travel needs of party cadres, civil
servants and other institutional members of the system, just like the maintenance
of internal cohesion in a state that was extremely heterogeneous in its ethnical,
religious, cultural and economic aspects, required a relatively dense transport
network system which was the only real means for the modernisation of transport
under the circumstances of an autocratic political system.
The Soviet domestic airline network performed the following tasks: the per-
sonal and material supply of the semi-nomad nationalities living in the very
sparsely populated Northern areas (left without any surface transport connec-
tions) as well as the supply of military headquarters and of various (meteorologi-
cal, hydrological, glaciological, oceanological, geophysical, seismological, bio-
logical, fishing) observation posts and providing travel services necessary for
their personnel (e.g. trips back home for vacation). Air transport was one of sev-
eral networks maintaining political power which covered the whole territory of
the Empire, and whose upgrade was eventually neglected by the Soviet state.
The circumstances of air transport in the Baltic States, annexed to the Soviet
Union (dense population and ground infrastructure network, much shorter dis-
tances) were completely different in the Soviet-oriented satellite states of Eastern
Central Europe and the Balkans, as well as in the German Democratic Republic.
For all these differences, by the pressure of the Soviets, they also built up a dense
domestic network from 1947/1949. In Yugoslavia, a predominantly mountainous
area, this kind of Soviet pressure was not present, but the difficulties of surface
communication among the six federal republics urged the Yugoslavian govern-
ment to build an extensive airline network; the intensive demands of tourism grew
into major factors in air service only in case of certain destinations and after the
turn of the 1960s/1970s.
In the late 1950s in Poland, a monocentric airline network emerged, con-
necting Warsaw with six remote cities. In Czechoslovakia, a bipolar Prague- and
Bratislava-centred airline scheme was formed, connecting ten provincial destina-
tions. Hungary developed an entirely Budapest-centred airline network but with
transversal connections between some peripheral cities (Figure 1). Domestic
airlines often connected cities lying at a distance of 130–160 kilometres. Except
for the Soviet Union, domestic air traffic volume was very low.
Air services running mostly on a daily or a few days per week basis with a
maximum of one or two flights and aircraft with a maximum 24 passenger capac-
ity always running at full capacity, could potentially carry 8 thousand passengers
in a year. However, flight cancellations on days with critical weather conditions
or in winter periods reduced their utilisation ratio to 20–40% of their potential
capacities; therefore, the actual number of their passengers was about 3-4 thou-
sand in the 1960s.
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Figure 1
The domestic airline network of Eastern Central European
countries in 1959
Source: Author’s construction.
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When answering the question of how reasonable a decision was the establish-
ment of an extensive domestic airline network, and what advantages it had, the
answer can be formulated after careful consideration from the perspectives of the
national airlines providing the service, the funding state, and of the users of the
service. From these point of view, domestic air transport
− created chances for expansion for the national service provider companies,
• running a larger sized air fleet which required not only a higher number
of operating staff but also an increase in the number of servicing and
technical maintenance capacities,
• airlines were also responsible for running several provincial airports,
• all these circumstances were favourable for the strengthening of the air
transport sector and for collecting valuable professional information.
− for the state budget, financing the actual costs of air services implied heavy
expenditures, which, until the 1960s, it was able to cover in every country,
but later on the contribution of the state showed large variation. In those
countries where certain elements of the market economy were already pre-
sent in economic and transport policy, domestic air services were terminated
in the 1960s (for example in Hungary) and airline networks were heavily
curtailed. Although this period coincided with the start of motorway con-
struction projects and the introduction of domestic express trains, these
measures cannot be regarded as a real alternative to air services in either
travel time or comfort level. In the late period of state socialism, not only
Poland and Romania, two countries with a relatively large territory, but also
Czechoslovakia, a smaller but elongated country, had operating domestic
airlines (in the latter, the Prague–Košice line was the longest). Although
both Czechoslovakia and Romania, which due to political considerations
were less sensitive to economic considerations, reduced their airline net-
works, the maintenance of their air networks remained the responsibility of
the state.
− Of the actors of domestic air transport, wealthy or socially privileged poten-
tial passengers (in fairly high numbers) were the evident winners. Airline
ticket prices in Eastern Central Europe were nearly identical to first class
rapid train tickets to the same destination. The majority of airline passengers
were bureaucrats and officers taking official trips, whose companies usually
covered the fare costs. For some segments of the population (in small coun-
tries a few thousand, in the Soviet Union a few million), air travel was a
means of getting acquainted with flying and enjoying the advantages of air
services and the ‘consumer’ experiences gained in such a way had a great
importance in developing a culture and an attitude towards flying.
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1.2.4 International air transport: an extensive network with few passengers
Communication (travel/telecommunication) between the western and eastern parts
of Europe was strongly hindered by the political confrontation starting in the late
1940s. However, the air transport space of our continent is by all means insepara-
ble as it forms a continuous network, and air, its natural carrier, is also global.
Because of this, even under the circumstances of political confrontation, it be-
came evident that cooperation would be indispensable in managing the common
problems of air transport between Europe’s two parts. This was a great challenge
for socialist countries, and they did not react to this for a time. In the cold war pe-
riod, even the authorisation of Western European airplanes entering socialist air-
space was not without conflicts. (Foreign airplanes were allowed to enter the air-
space of the Soviet Union and Siberia only from the late 1960s.) Later on, the
servicing quota of ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ airlines on their territory was speci-
fied by special political criteria. (The airlines of neutral states – such as Sweden,
Finland, Switzerland – were judged more favourably than NATO members.)
By passenger volume, 97–98% of the activities of Aeroflot, the world’s largest
airline at that time, were targeted at domestic air services Although its foreign
airline network reached all the continents of the world in the 1970/1980s, very
few services (mostly 1 or 2 per week) were operating on airlines going beyond the
Iron Curtain. The global network of Aeroflot was introduced first of all to obtain
revenues in hard currency and secondly to service the great number of diplomatic
missions, foreign trade/cultural etc. embassies of the Soviet Union.
With the exception of Yugoslavia and partly Romania, the international airline
network of socialist countries in the 1950s was strongly Eastern Europe and prin-
cipally Moscow-oriented, but later in the period of political detente from business
considerations it gradually spread into the Western part of Europe, North-Africa
and the Middle-East, serviced by new, better, new-generation turboprop IL–18,
An–24, and later TU–104, TU–134 and TU–154 model jet aircraft after the turn
of the 1950/60s.
The most intensively used international airlines of the 1970/1980s in the East-
ern part of Europe were the Moscow–Prague, Moscow–Budapest, Moscow–Sofia,
Prague–Sofia and Moscow–London routes. International airlines also built their
airlines towards the most important Western European hub-airports, easing in this
way access to the global airline networks.
In the 1980s, the purpose of international air trips was also in change in East-
ern Central Europe. An increasing number of passengers was travelling abroad for
private reasons (paying visits), and among them there were several ten thousands
travelling to North America as well as Soviet citizens emigrating to Israel. The
easing of the dictatorial regimes, the normalisation of contacts with the capitalist
states and permitting travel to foreign countries for a larger segment of the popu-
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lation made the orientation of air traffic of East Central European states more
balanced, which means that nearly as many people were travelling to Western as
to Eastern Europe. Aeroflot, LOT and SA with their long-range IL–62 aircraft
were able to render intercontinental services, e.g. by launching direct airline ser-
vices to Cuba and North America.
2 From torso to a success sector: Changes in air transport
during the regime change and after the collapse of the former
state formations until the 21st century
There were large differences between the country blocs of Eastern Europe in the
period following the 1989/1991 political ‘cataclysm’ (regime change, the collapse
of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia) regarding the speed and
depth of economic recession which had deep, although not immediate impacts on
aviation as well. In the post-soviet region, the performance of air transport is still
only a torso of the 1980s, while in the other countries of the former Iron Curtain,
it is a success sector which has only been superseded by the advances of
telecommunication.
2.1 The polarisation of development by macro-regions/country blocs
The progress and present degree of demand for air services are highly region-
specific factors in Central and Eastern Europe.
2.1.1 From over-sized (?) to slimmed and strongly segmented air transport in
CIS countries
Recovery from the economic crisis started the latest in the Community of Inde-
pendent States (CIS). Even in 2005, its GDP was below the value of 1988. In this
post-soviet region, the demand for air services was falling at an increasing speed
and today it is still far behind the level of the Soviet era. The drastic fall of
demand took place within the system of the former Soviet Empire. In the old pe-
riod, several million trips were generated by several million members of the
Soviet Army while entering or leaving army service, going on holidays, by the
trips of federal party members, by the official trips of state and government func-
tionaries travelling between the 15 member republics or between regions lying
several thousand kilometres from each other, or by the delivery of workers re-
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cruited from various parts of the Soviet Union to various large building project
sites and so on.
Trips/deliveries of a predominantly official character were covered by gov-
ernment expenditures. The exhaustion of government resources and the steps
made on the way towards the market economy resulted in terminating several
activities funded by the state. The most dramatic situation resulted from neglect-
ing the northern regions and the retirement of air services from northern rural
communities. Nearly one thousand low traffic, small airfields were closed in the
northern tundra and taiga areas. The public provision of the abandoned population
living under semi- or fully nomadic circumstances and their transportation to
central settlements is now possible only by sleighs in the winter or by slow boats
on wild rivers in the summer.
Thus, in Russia, curtailments in the supply side of air services resulted not
only from a natural response to decreasing demands, but rather the retreat of the
state’s duties in servicing the inhabitants of northern, sparsely populated areas.
The organisational structure of post-soviet air transport was segmented to an
extreme degree. Aeroflot, the past one-and-only mega-sized airline had broken up
into 262 small companies and groups by 1995. Several of them – some of whose
air fleet consisted of only one TU–134 aircraft – were not functionally viable, but
due to several changes in their ownership structure, could survive. In 2006, still
more than two-hundred of them were listed in firm registries.
On the basis of cost-benefit analyses made from the aspects of corporate eco-
nomics, low-intensity but spatially extensive airline networks are heavily
unprofitable; therefore, their operation needs community funding. From the mar-
ket economy perspective, air services in the Soviet era were oversized, but from
the perspective of the millions of passengers whose status changed from ‘ser-
viced’ into ‘exposed’ in the transportation sense, now find contemporary North
Russian airline services crippled and unsatisfactory.
While the size and performance of the present domestic airline services of
Russia are only a torso compared to the situation twenty years ago, international
air services were also downsized (Aeroflot terminated several African, Latin-
American and even some South-Asian destinations). Air traffic, particularly the
number of charter flights, increased from the second half of the 1990s, due partly
to the emerging new Western European, East-Asian and American airlines.
There has been little improvement in the air service quality of CIS countries;
in several cases, it does not comply with contemporary standards. Some of its
segments – most of all the regional fleets and airports of rural areas – are just like
in the countries of the third world. The modernisation of aircraft fleets, the ac-
quisition of more reliable and more economically operating and less polluting
American and Western European aircraft have so far been carried out by the air-
lines which are the most profitable and most specialised in international services.
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2.1.2 A promising experiment for closing up to the increasing demand
and for quality improvement in Visegrad Four Countries and in
the Baltic States
Unlike in CIS countries, the decline of air traffic lasted only one or two years in
the Visegrad Four Countries, and unlike other transport sectors, by 1992/1993 the
number of passengers had stabilised and started to grow just before the new de-
velopment period of the economy. In the West and Central Balkans due to the
Yugoslavian Civil War, and on the East Balkan due to the very heavy and persis-
tent economic recession, the low traffic volume tendency remained for a long
period. In the majority of countries, passenger volume figures for 2005 were still
lagging behind the 1989 values. However, the Baltic States soon recovered from
the inevitable decline of the early 1990s, and now their traffic is larger than it
was in the Soviet era.
In the area currently called Eastern Central Europe (with the exception of the
countries hit by the Yugoslavian Civil War), several factors were contributing to
the growth of demand for air services. By the abolition of obligatory visa systems,
introducing less restrictive customs duties, increasing hotel capacities for foreign-
ers, simplifying the reservation system of accommodation services and by im-
proving the quality of catering services, tourist attraction increased and multiplied
the number of inbound air trips. These factors, with the growing interests of for-
eign visitors from western countries, their increasing demand for journeys –
which partially originated from their rising living standards – all contributed to
the growth of air tourism. On the other hand, the growing demand for air transport
in the countries of Eastern Central Europe can also be explained by such factors
as
− the increasing demand of masses of people who have obtained an interna-
tional passport to discover parts of the world they had no access to before,
− the intensification of contacts with foreigners, growing foreign trade with
European and world economy actors, resulting from international coopera-
tion in production and other fields (trips made for business, educational and
cultural purposes),
− a rapid increase in the number of former emigrants’ visits to their homeland
from overseas areas.
Eastern Central European air and airport companies have improved not only
in the quantitative sense, but are now capable of servicing demands requiring
higher qualitative standards and have been renewed in their organisational and
property structure (with stronger ‘western assistance’). In this sense, they could
achieve better results in developing their international air services both in quan-
titative and qualitative aspects than CIS countries. This is seen in several fields,
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starting from the almost complete ‘Westernisation’ of air fleets through the
enlargement and modernisation of major airports to the integration into the global
servicing systems of economically advanced countries.
2.2 The harmonisation of the air transport system of Eastern Central
Europe with the transport policy of the European Community/Union in
organisational restructuring and technical modernisation
2.2.1 The slow progress of liberalisation/deregulation and privatisation,
the problems of development
The economic and air contacts between the former socialist countries have weak-
ened very much by now. With the abolition of the COMECON system, the multi-
lateral block agreements have lost their validity; therefore, contacts could be
based on bilateral agreements only. The air transport policy of the EU is getting
more and more determinate and exemplary in the context of west-oriented eco-
nomic-political interactions for the air service actors of the past COMECON
countries, and it is characterised by integration and deregulation within common
market dimensions. The former socialist countries had to accept that state au-
thorities should minimise their intervention into air transport affairs and bilateral
agreements, to be replaced by the multilateral agreement system of the European
Community (Pan-European Community). However, this task proved to be such an
enormous one that even the Visegrad Four Countries standing the closest to a
functional market economy needed several years to gradually convert their sys-
tems into a more liberalised system of air transport.
The European Community’s liberalisation package for the years 1987, 1991
and 1993 served as a pattern. This was the standpoint of drafting flight require-
ments between Western and Eastern Europe, and of creating a system for the
automatic authorisation of extra tariffs. Even in the distribution of capacities and
entering the market, positive impacts were expected. Expanding the air transport
system of EC into the territory of the past COMECON countries had to be pre-
ceded by a harmonisation process, e.g. expert training licenses, flight time limita-
tions, service regulation and flight compliance criteria had to be specified. The
missing reconciliation of legal issues is a serious obstacle before the full integra-
tion of Eastern European countries into the EU’s common policy (e.g. how the
decisions of the European Court of Justice can be harmonised with or applied in
the legal system of these countries).
European air transport urgently needed a harmonised, liberal transport market.
According to EU documents, as a response to the challenges of internationalisa-
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tion/globalisation, united Europe had to make efforts towards creating a Pan-
European air transport system reaching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Ural range.
Another major problem of European air transport is the utilisation (conver-
sion) of military airports for civilian purposes, i.e. selecting the appropriate
method and reasonable extent of this process. One of the most urgent tasks in this
field is setting up a homogenous air space surveillance and traffic control system
to replace today’s fragmented structure – when every country has its own air traf-
fic control/checking station – which should be followed by setting up a common
military and civil air traffic controlling and surveillance system.
Table 3
The major tasks of the transformation of air transport in the different country
blocks of Eastern Europe
CIS countries
Baltic (post-soviet)
Other former socialist countries
(Russia, Ukraine,
states (Estonia,
the successor
countries with the successor
Belorussia, Moldavia)
Latvia, Lithuania)
states of
no changes in
states of
Czechoslovakia
territory*
Yugoslavia
– I nd ep en de nt na ti on al a irl in e s
–
organisation
– The replacement of technically obsolete, strongly polluting Soviet-made air
fleets into western aircraft
– The transformation of the demand structure of international air traffic by the
preference of westward airlines. Creating the necessary technical/organisational
background. Training air staff for complying with Western European air service
standards (teaching English for adequate proficiency) and for running intercon-
tinental air services if needed.
– A i r po rt s s h ou l d b e i mp r ov e d f r o m t ech n ical /ai r c on t ro l a s pec t s
– C o mp eti ti on s h o ul d be in tr o d uce d by fo u n di ng s ev er al p ri vate air li ne s
* Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland.
Source: Author’s construction based on Kulke–Friedler, 2003.
The political changes of the early 1990s imposed challenges on the air trans-
port of the different Eastern European country blocks as it is shown by Table 3.
The impacts of political/economic transformation were only slowly filtering down
into the organisational scheme of air transport in the Eastern part of Europe be-
cause the introduction of a market system and creating the preconditions of com-
petition proved to be an extremely difficult task in a system dominated by the
proprietorship of the state. Although later on, new actors (small private airlines)
were emerging on the markets of air transport in some countries, in the majority
of cases, their importance and performance were far weaker than of the traditional
national airlines.
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After the regime change, a slow transformation process started in the organ-
isational scheme and property structure of air transport, creating a new organisa-
tional framework, introducing a company system, facilitating the emergence and
moderate growth of the private sector and raising several problems in the prepa-
ration for entering into the liberalised world of the European market.
State (‘national’) airlines changed into share companies, some of whose equity
stake (specified by the governments) went into foreign hands, but the majority of
them remained state majority or fully state owned corporations. (In Russia it is a
common phenomenon that the state’s 51% majority ownership is opposed to the
49% airline employees’ equity stake, as was the case for the Aerobratsk, KD-Avia
in Kaliningrad, and Vladivostok Avia companies.)
Some small (mainly charter servicing) private airlines such as the Bulgarian
Air Via, the Czech Travel Service and the Romanian Airom were founded, partly
becoming competitors of the leading airline, and partly extending the palette
(supply side) of air services by introducing new market segments.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia and the disintegra-
tion of Czechoslovakia, a very asymmetric air transport potential was available in
their successor states. While SA, based on the very strong potentials of Prague,
could operate as a relatively strong company, Slovakia was left without any air-
lines capable of serving as a national one. Therefore, Slovakia was badly in need
of the services of foreign airlines and under these circumstances the services of
the new domestic small airlines were of tertiary importance until the emergence
of discount airlines in the early 2000s.
In Eastern Central Europe, the majority of airports were in joint ownership,
while in CIS countries, they remained in state ownership although they were op-
erated by private and in several cases by foreign companies. Small airfields were
run by local/regional governments and some private investors also emerged in the
market to grab some portion of property (This was for example the case with the
Audi Car Corporation in GyĘr contributing significantly to the building of the
nearby Pér airport to use it for maintaining air contacts with its headquarters in
Germany.)
The dynamic growth of air traffic between Western Europe and the majority of
(principally Eastern Central European) former COMECON countries increased
the number of domestic and even more so Western European airlines on the mar-
ket.
The liberalisation of the European market offered great opportunities, but at
the same time, meant high risks for airlines. The positions of the ‘flagship’ – but
not necessarily or not always rightfully ‘national’ – airlines, and of the new pri-
vate companies were worsened by the fact that competition as an outcome of lib-
eralisation increased the traffic of highly capitalised Western airlines, who did
not and still do not have to face any limitations regarding their prices and the
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number of their destinations. The transition from the international system of bilat-
eral agreements into a global open airspace system requires great efforts. For all
companies, working out a medium and long-term strategy has become a de-
manding task. The first ideas regarding which (economic, technical, management)
criteria airlines should meet for surviving on the markets of international air
transport have already been drafted.
The efforts of the airlines of the post-soviet and post-socialist block in
switching over to modern technology and acquiring information and applying
modern know-how (which was indispensable for improving their market posi-
tions) were accompanied by worries about the financial feasibility of their in-
vestment projects. In the earlier period, the airlines of the COMECON block fol-
lowed a development policy which was based on their own resources and efforts.
The contribution of the state is decreasing in the financial subsidisation of the
air sector. One reason is legal regulations passed in the name of economic com-
petition, limiting the rights of the state to provide financial assistance to airlines.
The other reason is that the state has limited resources to provide financial assis-
tance due to several restrictions it has to introduce in its own budgetary system.
The airlines of the former socialist countries – apart from some exceptions –
are loss-making businesses; therefore, they are not the most attractive for private
investors. After the regime change, airlines were still making efforts to fund their
development projects from their own financial resources, but it soon became ob-
vious that for their survival, they need a financially strong business partner. The
technical modernisation of air fleets, the transformation of management and cor-
porate systems demand strong assistance from the Western world, and some of
these – not negligible – expenditures were partially sponsored by EU funds.
2.2.2 The (transitory?) role of the European Community in retrieving the losses
of air transport in Eastern Europe
Right after the regime change in the first half of the 1990s, EC/EU was yet will-
ing to provide significant financial assistance to the air transport sector of the for-
mer socialist countries – in the new situation it was an inevitable and urgent task
for its transformation and renewal. At that time, the European Community was on
the opinion that in Eastern-Europe and principally in Russia, all the elements of
the transport sector need an urgent reconstruction due to their technical obsoles-
cence, and to the negligence and amortisation of infrastructure and technical de-
vices threatening by this way the security of air transport as well. Therefore, the
European Community set down major tasks in the following order of importance:
The modernisation of air traffic control (technical upgrade to satellite commu-
nication) and its reorganisation for compliance with international standards, ac-
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quiring proficiency in English for air traffic controllers operating on new interna-
tional airlines.
Providing curriculum and educational devices for improving air traffic control
in eight countries.
A strict technical inspection of air fleets and the specification of higher techni-
cal requirements for the operation authorisation of aircraft.
The renovation and in some cases enlargement of major airports with interna-
tional air traffic, the upgrading of passenger service facilities, assistance to na-
tional airport development and reorganisation plans. Within this framework, the
30 largest airports of Russia had to be reconstructed. According to this plan, the
focal areas of these development projects had to be Moscow, Saint Petersburg,
Irkutsk and Nizhniy Novgorod. In Ukraine, a British-Canadian syndicate was
commissioned by the reconstruction of Kharkiv airport to be finished by the end
of 1998. The objective of this project was that as a result of enlargement and re-
construction, the capacity of Kharkiv inhabited in a high proportion by the Rus-
sians reached the 1995 year capacity of Borispol, the capital city’s airport. (This
development project funded by TACIS also included the renovation of the air-
ports of Bucharest, Bratislava as well as Uzbekistan.)
Providing assistance to some airlines to adapt their corporate organisation to
the market economy (Aeroflot RIA, Air Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Air Moldova,
Tarom, regional airlines).
Providing assistance to aircraft manufacturing in Russia for the availability of
more advanced models complying with Western standards in the field of envi-
ronmental criteria.
The privatisation of airlines, airport directorates, the reorganisation of their
corporate scheme, the introduction of new regulations for the compliance with
international standards and practice, the dissemination of relevant Western Euro-
pean experiences, running consultation services and providing assistance to all the
costs from EU funds.
The European Union assisted the modernisation of the air transport of Eastern
European countries until the mid-1990s by a sum of 500 million ECUs. In com-
parison with the 7.6 billion ECUs of the total institutional grants provided by
TACIS, Phare and other programmes to this region, this is a relatively small con-
tribution only, and air transport enjoyed no priority among the assisted areas even
in the explanation of partial programmes. This credit item originated from various
resources. EIB (European Investment Bank) contributed by 215 million, EBRD
(European Bank of Reconstruction and Development) by ca. 160 million, the
TACIS programme by nearly 100 million and Phare by 17 million ECUs to this
project. The largest sums were spent on improving air traffic control systems (Ta-
ble 4).
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Table 4
EU grants allocated for the development of Eastern European economy and
herein the development of the air transport sector in million ECU, 1993–1996
Development area items
TACIS
EBRD
PHARE
EIB
Total
Russia
CIS
Eastern
Central
Europe
ATC (Air traffic control)
34.0
0
26.7
6.8
155.0
222,5
Airlines
6.4
0
23.9
9.2
0.0
39,5
Airports
9.3
30.5
30.1
1.0
60.0
130,9
Aeronautics/conversion*
43.8
0
0.0
0.0
0.0
43,8
Satellites/conversion
8.3
45.8
3.8
0.0
0
57,9
Air transport total
101.8
76.3
84.5
17.0
215.0
494,6
All sectors total
2250.0
6652.0
5400.0
18,222.0
The ratio of air transport
sector from the total amount
4.5
2.4
0.3
5.5
2.7
of grants in percentage
* By conversion we mean the transfer, conversion and utilisation of military equipment, technology
and traffic capacities for civil purposes.
Source: Author’s compilation based on data found on each programme’s website.
Beyond the EU’s institutional grants, Western European companies also
played some role in the modernisation of Central and Eastern European air
transport as European aircraft manufacturers (Airbus) and ground equipment
manufacturing corporations (such as Thomson-CSF, Alenia and Racal, ATC etc.)
could find market segments for themselves in the region. Of Western airlines,
several were involved in Central and Eastern European ventures (for example
Austrian Airlines and Swissair in Ukraine International, or Air France in SA.)
In addition to country level assistance programmes, regional development
programmes were also launched. Thus, for example, a programme named NAPO
should have contributed to the serial production of An-38 model aircraft, a more
advanced variant of the earlier Antonov models manufactured for servicing
regional airlines. It should have served as a model to be followed for a computer
aided planning of regional air transport network in the Irkutsk zone.
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2.2.3 The uneven and partial modernisation of air fleets – the replacement
of Soviet-made aircraft into western ones
In some of the former socialist countries of Eastern Central Europe, in the years
preceding regime change, although in a rather limited number, new west-made
aircraft had already been purchased. In this way for example INTERFLUG, the
airline of the GDR, modernised its fleet by two A-310 models in 1988, while
MALÉV also leased B–737 jet planes.
The political changes in nearly all countries of Eastern Europe put an end to
the homogeneity of aircraft models, meaning the hegemony of Russian-made
aircraft was over. For the equipment of air fleets with west-made aircraft and for
the replacement of Soviet-made aircraft models, the conditions were totally
different among the country blocks of Eastern Europe.
The progress of the technical modernisation of air fleets was the fastest in the
Visegrad Four Countries.
− on the one hand, this was due to their much more intensive and genuine
contacts with Western European countries, which initially were enough for
aircraft leasing, but later on served in a form of guarantees and trusts
provided for buyer’s credits;
− on the other hand, due to the favourable volume of traffic, air fleets needed
enlargement and as domestic aircraft manufacturing did not exist at that
time, the most decisive factors of import purchases were the technical stan-
dards and quality level of aircraft.
The composition of air fleets by aircraft model changed significantly within a
few years’ period to the advantage of western aircraft (mostly Boeing and
partially Airbus models), and the ratio of Antonov, Tupolev, Ilyushin and
Jakovlev models decreased significantly.
There were no Soviet-made aircraft in the fleets of post-Yugoslavian countries.
Their replacement took place due to amortisation or quality improvement reasons.
Of the countries of the East-Balkan, although Romania started to use west-
made aircraft at an earlier time, the total replacement of the air fleet lasted until
the late 1990s. In Bulgaria, the large-scale modernisation of the air fleet through
model change started only in the mid-1990s.
Qualitative changes had to be combined with the adaptation of air fleet to the
demands of traffic which at first led to a decrease in the number of aircraft in
Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and in other countries.
In CIS countries – namely in Russia – the aircraft in international comparison
had become very obsolete by the mid-1990s: the average age of aircraft exceeded
15 years, and their state in fact resembled those in some countries of the third
world. There was a strong increase in the number of lethal accidents and air ca-
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Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
tastrophes not only on domestic, but also on international airlines (e.g. in Zaire or
at Svalbard). The solution for this problem would have been to enter west-made
aircraft into service, but low financial resources limited the number of such occa-
sions.
Although new airlines whose number was quickly rising soon recognised that
in a market situation without state subsidisation, they had to replace their Soviet-
made aircraft into more economical and comfortable Western models (Duffy,
2004), even larger airlines could afford this only in a few cases until 2005.
The greatest contradiction of the situation in Russia is that this country could
have been the largest beneficiary of the modernisation of air fleets, having
dangerously obsolete aircraft strongly disfavoured by foreign passengers and
airports, the speed of progress is the slowest here of all countries.
The delayed modernisation of air fleets was finally forced by the renewed in-
tensification of traffic and the sharpening competition among airlines. There were
two alternatives for modernising aircraft models: the first was developing on the
basis of domestic made, the second on the basis of foreign made models.
The first means the upgrading of the physically amortised and at the same time
technically obsolete fleet to a cheaper and a bit more advanced home-made one
(which means ‘new generation’ models in the successor states of the Soviet Un-
ion) by purchasing IL–96 and TU–204 brands. However, the demand for Russian-
made aircraft fell dramatically, and they are in fact unsalable on domestic mar-
kets. In 2005, seven aircraft were manufactured, but only three of them were pur-
chased as they failed to comply with the ICAO’s Capital IV noise emission stan-
dards for the year 2006.
Although the development of the country's commercial air fleet takes a good
position among the priorities of the medium-term national transport development
programme of Russia ('The Development of Russia's Transport Complex 2002–
2010'), but it has no connection with realities and real possibilities. According to
this programme, the majority of the 134 aircraft to be purchased until 2010 for
servicing long-distance/international airlines should be Russian-made, economi-
cally fuelled low noise, new generation aircraft (Radloff, 2003). However, ac-
cording to pessimistic 2004 forecasts, half of Russia's total air fleet (1500 aircraft)
will totally be unfit for flying by 2010, and this rate will increase by 2015 to 80%
if the present slow progress of aircraft replacements will be maintained (Hälfte…
2004). The home-made aircraft based option is a totally unrealistic way of
solution, in fact it would rather be a real failure story.
The other alternative would be the purchase imported aircraft made more
expensive by high customs and VAT. However, the acquisition of new foreign-
made aircraft was limited. Only the largest Russian airlines with good bank loan
credentials could afford the luxury of purchasing aircraft directly from Boeing
and Airbus manufacturers to emerge on foreign markets demanding the best
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service quality. Purchasing used aircraft (affected by 20% import tax and 18%
VAT duties beyond purchasing price) was a common phenomenon in Russia.
There was a time when it used to be a common practice that to enforce the
development of the domestic aerospace industry, the state ordered the purchasing
of a Russian-made aircraft as well when buying a west-made model. The large-
scale scrapping and selling off of Russian made aircraft taking place
simultaneously with the extensive purchasing and leasing of new west-made
aircraft was described as the ‘cannibalisation’ of air fleets (Morgenstern, 2005).
However, the emergence of a ‘quasi-competition market’ had already proved
that filling up air fleets with west-made aircraft was a question of life and death.
Even large cargo carriers (e.g. Air Bridge, Volga-Dnepr) are not satisfied with
AN–124 Soviet-Ukraine made 130–150 ton jumbo planes, but they are rather
interested in securing their future by purchasing the cargo plane variant of B-747
with smaller loading capacities.
One of the greatest problems in the aircraft supply of post-soviet states seems
to be in the field of ‘regional aircraft’, as the small and medium-range 60–90
passenger capacity Soviet made aircraft (AN–8, TU–134 etc.) have been
completely amortised; therefore, their immediate replacement should take place
without delay. For this reason, to reduce the import of very expensive west-made
aircraft (ATR, Fokker, Bombardier, Canadier etc.), some experiments were made
by the Russian aerospace industry for the home manufacturing of similar models
but these efforts have brought very little success.
The Russian Ministry of Transport since 2004 has provided subsidisation for
the Russian regional aircraft planning (Russian Regional Jet-RRJ) project to a
sum of 120 million USD. The winner of the bid was the civilian aircraft manufac-
turing affiliate of the Sukhoi Design Bureau, but it has not produced the prototype
yet. The list of participants in the RRJ project increased by the Tupolev Public
Stock Company and Myasishchev Design Bureau working on the design of TU–
414 and M–60-70 model regional aircraft in cooperation with famous English and
French firms representing Western style high-tech standards (e.g. Pratt &
Whitney, Snecma) especially in the fields of engine design and manufacturing
technology (Deeg, 2005).
The manufacturing of AN–140 model regional aircraft for the replacement of
AN–24, AN–26 and JAK–40 is in progress in Samara, in Kharkov, Ukraine and
in Isfahan, Iran. (On the latter site, 80 aircraft are manufactured by licence
annually.) The prototypes of AN–74 models for special purposes and AN–148s
with an effective range of max 5,000 kilometres have also been manufactured
(Flugzeugprogramme… 2006).
The greatest paradox of Russia’s air sector lies between the newly increasing,
vast demands for regional-scale air transport and the absence of home-made
regional aircraft complying with the technical standards of our age to satisfy these
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demands. If the ambitious plans fail, the airlines of Russia will depend on the two
giant aerospace manufacturers of the Western world (Boeing, Airbus) and on
some medium-sized firms (ATR, Bombardier) in purchasing aircraft made for
both long-distance and regional traffic. This will mean that Russia will not be
among the world’s few passenger aircraft manufacturer countries. The question is
whether the citizens of Russia are also ready to accept this situation as a
consequence of globalisation, the concentration of high tech manu-
facturing/financial resources, i.e. the monopolistic situation of the bipolar world
(USA + EU), or national consciousness will supply enough power for Russia to
become the third centre of the world’s aircraft industry.
3 An abundance of airlines – moderately growing
air fleets – low intensity airlines
3.1 The distribution of the air fleet of airlines by service types
and traffic volume
The role of formerly famous national airlines had significantly decreased by the
beginning of our century, while a growing number of new market actors have
grown by a large degree. The rationalisations that had been carried out in multiple
waves proved to be unsatisfactory for preserving the competitiveness of national
champions because the operational losses they had accumulated and their debts
had reached a critical level. For this reasons, they are not attractive for investors.
The joint ownership of large Western airlines is frequently changing; therefore,
these airlines have no owners who, thinking in a long-term perspective, would
save these majority state-owned airlines from bankruptcy by capitalisation or the
reorganisation of their debts.
However, even in the years following the regime change, the restructuring of
the market started not only by the market entry of small, domestic private compa-
nies, but also Western European and major American airlines who had made
their presence more dominant and started to promote their services. Western
European airlines secured their market share by various methods. One of them
was to purchase the property shares of national and other domestic airlines, as
well as several code-sharing agreements with domestic airlines on seat capacity
sharing.
There is a large difference between the airlines of different countries in the
servicing ratio of the actual demands for air transport, which can be measured by
the passenger traffic volume of airports. In Russia, due to the country’s slowly
decreasing isolation and the dominance of domestic passenger traffic, domestic
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airlines dominate the market to highest rate (86.1%), while the services of foreign
airlines are the most heavily used in the most backward countries of the Balkans.
In Albania, the representation rate of domestic airlines is less than 24%. The ex-
tremely high value of Slovakia (Table 5) is originating from the fact that the
headquarter office of Sky Europe discount airlines is located in Bratislava.
Aero Charters, and the Azerbaijan Azalavia Hava Yoll). In passenger traffic
scheduled air flight services are dominating but the majority of airlines provide
charter flight services as an option. Air Astana is the only company providing
exclusively scheduled passenger flight services.
The passenger volume of charter flight services is surpassing the volume of
scheduled services at some airlines: Hemus Air, Slovak Airlines, South A. Travel
Servis, UTAir, Uzbekistan Airways. The main profile of Eastern European air-
lines, apart from a few exceptions, is passenger delivery. The number of large
airlines specialised in cargo delivery is very low (the Russian Volga–Dnieper is
one example) and the number of airlines operating special planes for cargo trans-
portation (IL–76, AN–124 etc.) is also very small (Aeroflot, Ukraine International
Airlines, Travel Servis, UTAir, Uzbekistan Airways). Some airlines (Aero Char-
ter, Ion Tiriac Air, Eurojet Romania, Enimex, Romavia) provide charter air ser-
vices only. The majority of companies provide both domestic and international air
services. 17 companies run international services only (including MALÉV). The
highest degree of specialisation in international service (over 75%) is found in
UTAir, while the airplanes of Aero Charter and Ion Tiriac Air are servicing do-
mestic airlines only.
Even the most significant airlines of Eastern Europe generate far lower traffic
than the mega airlines of advanced countries servicing global markets. In the
worldwide dimension, the annual traffic volume is 25–92 million on the largest
American airlines, while it is 16–50 million on the East Asian airlines. Even the
airlines of South-East Asia and Australia are servicing no less than 11–16 million
passengers. The passenger traffic of the leading airlines of the Central and Eastern
European former socialist countries (e.g. Aeroflot’s 6.6 million annual passen-
gers) is by several categories lower not only in comparison with American, East-
Asian and Western European mega airlines, but even worse than the results of the
second or third category Western European airlines and lagging behind several
Latin-American, South-Asian and African airlines.
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Table 5
The total and relative passenger traffic of the countries of Central
and Eastern Europe in 2005
Country block/country
Airport passenger
Population- Passenger GDP(USD)/ Air cargo,
traffic total
million number per capita (on
tons
1000
domestic
1 million
2003b)
passengers
% a)
inhabitants, purchase
1000
power
parity)
Poland
8,881
46.2
38.6
230.0
11,461
31,130
Czech Republic
11,312
56.6
10.2
1110.0
16,124
56,259
Hungary
8,105
50.0
10.0
810.5
14,629
55,472
Slovakia
2,320
75.4
5.4
429.5
13,005
4,069
Croatia
3,916
44.5
4.7
833.2
10,492
12,741
Slovenia
1,294
66.3
2.0
647.0
19,618
4,549
Visegrad and
35,828
50.4
70.9
505.3
164,220
W-Balkan countries
Romania
4,153
32.3
22.4
185.4
6,974
14,000
Serbia and Montenegro
2,500
44.9
10.7
239.6
4,555
8,100
Bulgaria
5,010
29.4
8.1
618.5
7,224
23,000
Bosnia-Herzegovina
280
35.7
4.1
68.3
6,240
2,100
Albania
1,420
23.9
4.0
352.0
4,547
1,500
Macedonia
686
32.1
2.0
343.0
4,610
5,040
East-Balkan/SW-
14,049
32.8
51.3
273.8
53,740
Europe
Russia
36,000
86.1
146.8
242.3
9,001
3,087,000
Ukraine
6,500
46.2
48.2
134.9
5,512
162,000
Belorussia
942
53.1
10.3
91.5
6,432
18,400
Moldavia
570
43.9
4.4
129.5
4,840
1,820
European CIS-
79.0
44,012
209.7
209.9
3,269,220
contries
Lithuania
1,383
32.5
3.9
354.6
11,036
9,580
Latvia
1,888
31.3
2.4
786.7
9,683
15,428
Estonia
1,400
40.7
1.4
1000.0
12,190
9,739
Baltic States
4,671
34.5
7.7
606.6
34,747
Central and Eastern
98,560
59.9
339.6
290.2
…
3,521,927
Europe total
a) The share of traffic generated by the airlines registered in the (home) country.
b) Nemzetközi Statisztikai Évkönyv [International Statistical Yearbook]. Budapest, KSH, 2004.
Source: The author’s compilation from international and world organisational statistical yearbooks,
various studies and the data published on the websites of various passenger airports.
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3.2 The increasing role of discount (‘low-cost’) carriers in the air transport
of Eastern Central Europe and the Baltic Region, their possible
emergence in CIS countries
The ICAO forecasts in the 1990s but even some years ago predicted the survival
of only 5–7 giant airlines by the years around 2010. However, in several cases,
the success of small and medium-sized discount airlines employing only a few
hundred staff each only against large (partially ‘national’) traditional airlines is
questioning the truth of such fundamental theories of economics as economies of
scale, i.e. the notion that in the globalising world, only companies exceeding a
continually growing minimum size are able to survive in the cut-throat competi-
tion which results in the loss of autonomy for small economic organisations and
their incorporation into large corporations.
In the early 2000s, the Eastern Central European region, or more precisely the
Visegrad Four countries with their strongest middle classes became the largest
market area for low-cost carriers. The four Western countries of Eastern Central
Europe proved to be an ideal environment for the newly emerging airlines,
founded mostly by Western European foreign investors but managed predomi-
nantly by Slovakian, Hungarian and Polish experts and locating their administra-
tive staff and technical equipment in the cities of Bratislava, Budapest, Warsaw
and Prague, where the annual GDP per capita value was between 8,000–11,000
thousand USD in the year of their foundation. This income level on the one hand
made the growth of demand for air services probable, but also generated an in-
creased interest in finding affordable solutions. With their cheaper prices in com-
parison with traditional air services, discount airlines became major air service
providers for more and more destinations. They are now also operating in the
Baltic States, and their formation is underway in some countries of South-Eastern
and Eastern Europe. The post-socialist area was attractive for these special air-
lines because their wage costs are only one third or one half of the Western Euro-
pean ones. This advantage may decrease with the expected convergence of West-
and Eastern European wages.
The selection of airports is a very important consideration in the business
strategy of Eastern Central European low-cost carriers, where the most determi-
nant factors are the size of the candidate airport’s gravity zone and the costs of
airport operation (facilities). Large agglomeration zones with several million in-
habitants increased the attraction of Warsaw, Prague and Budapest for air service
use. However, using the airports of capital cities (especially Ferihegy) carries
heavy costs. It seems that following capital cities, the emergence of low-cost car-
riers is continuing on the airports of provincial large cities of secondary or tertiary
importance (Debrecen, Pécs, Lublin, Ostrava, Kosie etc.).
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It is the Eastern Central European capitals that are the most important airports
for the international network of low-cost carriers. The share of low-cost carriers
in the airport traffic of Prague was already 8% in September 2003, because the
Czech Republic was the first of the former socialist states to liberalise its air
transport policy. In Prague, mostly English low-cost carriers (e.g. easyJet,
bmibaby) provide low-cost air travel to the major cities of Western Europe. Smart
Wings operates discount airlines with a branch company of Travel Service, a na-
tional charter airline. Thanks to this, between 1997 and 2002, passenger traffic on
the London–Prague line increased by 51%; the traffic increase of low-cost carriers
on the same route was 29% in 2003.
In 2003, low-cost carriers invaded the airport of Bratislava situated only 40
kilometres from Vienna. In Warsaw, WizzAir and Get Jet also emerged besides
easyJet and Sky Europe.
Of the discount airlines servicing in Eastern Central Europe in 2006, WizzAir,
SkyEurope and Centralwings achieved outstanding results by their performance
and traffic increase rates. They could do this by exploiting the chances of market
growth due to the increased demand for air trips after EU enlargement – while
Ryanair and Germanwings were also successful in taking their stand on this mar-
ket. Altogether, ‘low-cost’ airlines had seized 41% of the air travel market in
Poland, 24% in Hungary and 14% in the Czech Republic by the first half of 2006.
Discount-airlines run airport shuttle bus services to deliver their passengers
from distant areas to their base airports in both directions, such as from Bratislava
airport into the city centre of Vienna, in Poland on the Katowice–Gliwice–
Krakow route, and in Hungary on the Debrecen–Budapest route.
Beyond the Visegrad Four countries, discount airlines entered into service in
the market of Baltic Region. Their majority (serviced by EasyJet, Flynordic, Esto-
nian Air, „Premium and Travel” discount airlines) connects Tallinn into their
service network covering an area from London to Northern Europe. By 2009, the
Swedish FlyMe discount airline will be a 100% owner of the Lithuanian market
leader LAL airline.
In CIS countries, the discount airline business is just in the initial phase in
Russia (e.g. Moscow–Berlin and Moscow–Mineralnie Vodi, the famous Cauca-
sian spa centre). The majority of passengers flying long-distance and spending
several hours on the plane are unwilling to travel without board services. This and
the tough resistance of traditional airlines to the new competitors will limit the
expansion possibilities of low-cost services for a long time.
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3.3 The spatial characteristics of airport supply
Airport supply has several quantitative and qualitative indicators.
− The major quantitative indicators are
• the number of airports, their relative density per spatial unit and popula-
tion number,
• their traffic capacity (measured in the number of flights, the number of
passengers and cargo load), which partially depends on the size and
modernity of the airport’s technical equipment, and partially on airspace
capacity,
• the number of offered destinations/airline routes.
− The major qualitative indicators are
• in the technical sense the availability of electronic instruments providing
navigation and instrumental landing facilities in any weather conditions,
the length and quality of runways determining the size and type of (de-
parting and landing) aircraft (grass/concrete-covered),
• the airports’ comfort level , the quality of their passenger and goods con-
trol systems with adequate capacity terminals (providing not only seats
but high standard catering, amusement and shopping facilities for
checked-in passengers), with an adequate number of boarding desks and
gates for minimizing queuing time and with closed corridors leading to
the board entry area of aircraft.
Obviously, the coverage of airport services must be adapted to the traffic vol-
ume category of airports; airports with small traffic should provide basic facilities
only.
In Eastern Central Europe and the Baltic Region, grass-covered airfields are
not used anymore in public passenger air traffic, but in the peripheral areas of the
CIS countries, they remain quite common, as they are suitable for servicing
propelled aircraft. However, concrete is indispensable for the landing and take-off
procedures of turboprop and principally jet engine planes.
Runways are strongly differing in length even among airports equipped for
servicing the same type of aircraft. It is known that in cold climate areas where
the air is denser, slightly shorter runways are sufficient for takeoffs and landings,
but the manifestation of this differentiating factor is not seen. In the densely
populated suburban regions of Western Europe, even the biggest airports very
often use runways in length of 2850 m, which are sufficient even for servicing
big-sized aircraft assuming normal procedures. However, in Eastern Europe,
principally on post-soviet territories, some airports’ runway length is 3600–3900
metres. (The Siauliai airport in Lithuania and Khabarovsk, Yekaterinburg,
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Moscow-Sheremetyevo and Ufa airports in Russia have the longest runways.)
These runways were designed in the past for An–124 and 225 model giant cargo
planes serving in the Soviet Army. In our modern world, to service the current A–
380 airbuses, airports need not only long runways, but they must also comply
with technical and passenger capacity utilisation criteria. Therefore, today, only a
few Eastern European airports are suitable for servicing these models.
The geographical division of supply has a key importance for the accessibility
of services (in time and costs). (Western Europe is now starting to formulate a
planning requirement for the accessibility of public passenger airport within a dis-
tance of 80–100 kilometres.)
The per 100,000 km2 relative airport density value has weak correlation with
both population density and economic development, but it is influenced by
several factors. One of them is to what degree the conversion of domestically built
and former Soviet military airports has been completed, at least to a degree
making them suitable for mixed use.
Airport density was by no means the strongest in Czechoslovakia or more
precisely in the Czech Republic, where several models of small civic aircraft and
even jet-engine military test aircraft were manufactured, and where the density of
flying clubs was the highest. The motivating force of tourism in building new
airports (principally for foreign visitors for accessing the Dalmatian seaside
resorts) was the strongest in Croatia in the past decades, but it was also the main
reason for building the Sármellék, Karlovy Vary, Poprad, PiešĢany, Varna,
Burgas, ConstanĠa, Simferopol airports.
The number of airports listed in Table 6 exceeds the number of public airports
(i.e. airports servicing scheduled domestic or international flights or charter
flights) in most countries. This difference is the highest in the Czech Republic,
where besides the capital city’s airport, only Karlovy Vary, Brno, Pardubice and
Ostrava can provide appropriate facilities for servicing scheduled (flying at least
by mid-sized aircraft) flights of the 18 provincial concrete-covered airports. (On-
demand air taxi services are available at a minimum of six airports.) Of the 24
concrete covered airports of Poland, only 4–5 provincial ones have been equipped
for international air traffic to some destinations, and another 6–8 in total for
domestic public air services operating small, or medium category 60–120 seat
capacity ‘regional’ aircraft. In contrast, the majority of Croatia’s concrete runway
airports are members of the network of public airports.
The vast majority of public airports is multifunctional by traffic destinations,
meaning they service both scheduled and charter flights be they passenger or
cargo carriers, but they are also ready for ‘general flight purpose’ category com-
munal service functions (ambulance-, fire-, security guard, or agricultural flights)
and servicing business flight category private airplanes to satisfy businessmen’s
flexible trip demands. Only a few airports have been specialised for cargo trans-
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Table 6
The public airport supply/density of countries
Country
Number of airports
Of them
per one-
per 100,000 GDP per
public
million
km2
capita in
inhabitants
USD in
in total of which with
number of airports with year 2003
concrete-cove-
concrete covered runway
red runway
Poland
58
24
14
0.62
7.7
11,461
Czech Republic
75
19
6
1.86
24.1
16,124
Slovakia
11
8
4
1.48
16.3
13,005
Hungary
12
10
4
1.00
10.8
14,629
Croatia
16
13
8
2.77
22.8
10,492
Slovenia
4
4
2
2.00
20.0
19,618
Visegrad and
176
78
38
1.10
12.8
W-Balkan
Albania
1
1
1
0.25
3.3
4,547
Bosnia-Herzegovina
4
4
2
0.98
7.9
8,240
Serbia-Montenegro
6
6
4
0.56
5.9
4,555
Macedonia
2
2
2
1.00
7.7
4,610
Bulgaria
5
5
4
0.62
4.5
7,224
Romania
17
17
17
0.76
7.1
6,974
E-Balkan/SW-
33
35
30
0.68
6.3
Europe
Russia
63
61
61
0.42
0.36
9,001
Ukraine
16
16
15
0.32
2.64
5,512
Belorussia
6
6
4
0.58
2.00
6,432
Moldavia
2
2
1
0.45
5.88
4,840
Eastern Europe/CIS
87
85
81
0.40
0.47
Estonia
6
5
2
3.57
11.1
12,190
Latvia
3
3
2
1.25
4.68
9,683
Lithuania
4
4
3
1.03
6.15
11,036
Baltic States
13
12
5
1.56
6.90
Just for comparison
Greece
64
60
5.66
45.5
Turkey
64
64
0.97
8.2
Source: The author’s calculations and compilation by the data of www.aircraft-charter-world.com/
airports/europe.htm.
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The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
port in the Eastern half of Europe, and even they are the accessories of Russian
large (munitions) complexes or aircraft manufacturing plants.
The ratio of international traffic is closely correlated with the administra-
tive/economic importance and population of the airport’s city, and even more
with the presence or absence of domestic air services in the country.
The airports of the capital cities of the Baltic States (Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius)
are almost entirely (98–100%) equipped for international air services just as Pra-
gue, Budapest and the capital cities of the small Balkan countries (Ljubljana, Ti-
rana, Skopje), as well as some tourist centres/spa cities: Kaunas, Karlovy Vary,
Sliac, Poprad, Ohrid.
The number of concrete runway public airports in Central and Eastern Europe
has increased by only 2% since 1990. The partial conversion of military airports
resulted in an increase of 25–200% in some cases in Eastern Central Europe and
the Baltic States, while in CIS countries, which have the largest number of air-
ports, there was little improvement as many of the (mostly grassy) airfields cre-
ated several decades ago proved to be redundant. Romania inherited 17 public
(concrete runway) airports; therefore, there is no need yet for building additional
regional airports. In Bulgaria, the post-Yugoslavian area, Poland and Hungary,
building concrete runways on larger grass-covered airports may increase the
number of airports capable of receiving jet engine aircraft on scheduled and
charter airlines.
The total airport traffic volume of Eastern Europe is by several categories
below Western Europe and the other highly advanced regions of the world such
as North America and East Asia in both the number of passengers per flight and
traffic volumes per airline. The highest volume of passengers turns up in the air-
ports of Russia (36 million annually), but this total is still less than the passenger
volume of Frankfurt am Main. The whole Central and Eastern European region
has no more airline passengers than the airports of London.
The relative traffic volume of passengers is mostly influenced by relative GDP
(there seems to be a medium degree of correlation between them), but geographi-
cal location (the degree of dependence on air services), aviation traditions, the
level of development achieved in earlier periods and air tourism based on cheap
discount flight services have become the major factors influencing traffic volume.
The annual number of air passengers per a million inhabitants is 1.2–3.0 mil-
lion in Western Europe, 4.6–6.6 million in North America and 2.1–4.8 in the eco-
nomically advanced countries of the Far East, while this figure is only 290 thou-
sand in Central and Eastern Europe. There is an even larger difference among
these regions in their passenger kilometre per million inhabitants indicators,
which is explained by the fact that in economically advanced continents, the ratio
of long-distance and inter-continental flights is higher. Eastern Europeans are
less mobile in the field of air transport and significantly less ‘globalised’ (which
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
means their integration into economic globalisation and cultural mondialisation
processes at a slower pace).
Central and Eastern European airline networks are far below the Western
European levels of physical density and individual airlines’ traffic intensity,
partly because of the countries’ lower population and urban settlement density –
of which the latter bears primacy – and partly because of lower travel needs
which means a lower level of demands.
Among the airports with a very low share of international traffic volume (1–
20%) we can find the ‘side-airport’ of Kyiv (Zhuljani) and the airports of the re-
gional (strongly varying in size) sub-centres of Romania, Russia and Ukraine
(Arad, Baia Mare, Suceava, Satu Mare, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Lugansk) (Fig-
ure 1).
The share of charter flights in the total international air traffic volume is very
high. It is over 80% at small regional airports specialised in such a service
(PiešĢany 99.6%, Bucharest-Banease 96.3%, ConstanĠa 90.5%, Poprad 82.3%).
As a contrast to this, the airports of the capital cities of some Visegrad, Baltic
and CIS countries (Prague, Warsaw, Budapest, Bucharest, Ljubljana, Skopje,
Vilnius and Tallinn) as well as Moscow-Sheremetyevo, Kiev-Zhuljani, Kiev-
Borispol and several cities with half million inhabitants (Novosibirsk, Yekaterin-
burg, Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, Katowice, Krivij Rih, Lugansk, Odessa, Rostov,
Khabarovsk, Samara) have very low 0.4–2.0% charter traffic share and this low
rate of charter traffic volume is also typical at small airports such as Simferopol,
Karlovy Vary, Rzesov, Vladivostok, Arad, Baia Mare, Cluj-Napoca, Suceava,
Sibiu and Satu-Mare.
The percentage values calculated from the number of „direct transit passen-
gers indicated on the ICAO website are below 1% at the biggest international
airports of Eastern Central Europe and Eastern Europe (Prague 0.1%, Warsaw
0%, Kiev 0.1%, Budapest 0.4%), which in national air transport policies are
referred to as ‘important transfer gateways of air traffic’ to be developed into
major hubs between West- and east-Europe!
From the analysis of airport traffic volume on the basis of continents/country
blocks, it is seen that the destination hierarchy of flights departing and landing at
airports is distance-dependent, as it is calculated by a gravitational model. Inter-
national flights are generally much longer but more rarely occur within the airline
system of the same continent.
In Central and Eastern Europe, the traffic volume of selected airports draws
the following picture (also see Table 7):
− the vast majority of capital city airports have direct air connections with
European destinations only (the capital city of Estonia has 100% percentage
and the capital city of Romania and Domodedovo – the second largest inter-
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
national airport of Moscow – has 88.6–88.8% percentage of air connections
with European cities only),
− air connections with non-European continents are the strongest with the
Middle East and North Africa, especially at South-Eastern European
airports located the nearest to these continents (Bucharest and Istanbul).
− The rate of air connections with Africa (the countries in and south of the
Sahara zone) is marginal only and smaller capital cities have no African
destinations at all.
− Only the largest Central Eastern European airports, most prominently
Moscow, provide direct air connections with Asia.
− Direct flights to North America are available only from the airports of the
Visegrad Countries and Moscow.
− Latin America can only be reached from Moscow and Prague without
transfer.
We can draw three major conclusions from the county block distribution of
available European destinations in Eastern Central European and Baltic States
which joined the EU in 2004:
− although the role of the distance factor has decreased since 1990, it is still a
dominant element of airline destinations (as a result of orientations shaped
by traditional economic/cultural relations),
− the attraction of Western European destinations has increased significantly,
especially for employees, businessmen and tourists travelling by discount
airlines,
− historical/ethnical/political relations (even sympathy) are also embodied in
the Western orientation of certain nations. For example, the Czech people
strongly sympathise with Great-Britain and Ireland, the Slovenians and
Hungarians with Germany and the Estonians with Finland.
The major airlines of Europe connect Eastern European metropolises with
Western Europe’s leading airports and major air hubs consisting of several air-
ports. The functional attraction of Western European mega airports is explained
by two factors:
− on the one hand their serviced metropolis (region/country) exercises an eco-
nomic and cultural gravitational force as a result of bilateral connections
and
− as ‘world airports’ they perform a hub function in intercontinental transport,
acting as intermediary and transfer stations in the chain of global transport.
Although some overseas airlines depart even from the capital cities or pro-
vincial cities of some former socialist countries, Central and Eastern Euro-
pean passengers are still in a bad need of using Western European mega air-
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
The Fundamental Problems and Spatial Differences of Air Transport in Eastern Europe.
Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
ports providing them direct air connections not only with the other two
power centres of the world (North America and the Far East), but with sev-
eral other parts of the world not accessible from us directly by any means of
transport.
The busiest airline of Eastern Europe connects Prague with London, carrying
more than 320 thousand passengers annually. (Just for comparison: the London–
New York airline carries 6.2 million, the London–Amsterdam 5.1 million
passengers.) The second busiest airline connects Warsaw with London (with
nearly 190 thousand annual passenger traffic), while the third busiest one is the
Prague-Frankfurt airline (with 175 thousand passengers). ICAO statistics reports
only 21 airlines of Central and Eastern European former socialist countries ex-
ceeding 17 thousand passengers annually.
Four capital cities (Warsaw, Prague, Moscow and Budapest) and two major
economic centres (Cracow and Timioara) have 15 direct air connections total
with North American metropolises. The Polish cherish the strongest contacts with
the Americans regarding not only passenger volume, but also because apart from
the world cities of the East Coast (New York, Toronto), passengers of Polish air-
lines can also directly reach Central American regions by flying airlines carrying
them to Chicago. The intensity of the utilisation of Asia targeted airlines is by far
below the passenger volume of the North American ones except for those flying
to Seoul, Tokyo and Tel-Aviv.
In the Central and Eastern European region, the annual passenger traffic vol-
ume is the highest on the Moscow–Kyiv airline carrying 63 thousand passengers
annually between the two most populated states of the former Soviet Union. This
is because economic ties are still very strong between the two cities, not to men-
tion that in both countries, several thousand ‘minorities’ of the other nation live.
The second position of the Prague–Moscow airline and the third position of the
Prague–Sofia airline have resulted from the high number of tourists.
In Central and Eastern European dimension (up to the Ural Mountains), the
length of direct airline connections exceeds the distance of 1800 kilometres only
in rare cases. Although the transport policy of the EU does not favour short-dis-
tance air connections, in the Eastern part of Europe, ten international airlines are
operating on very short distances because of poor surface transport connections.
Such is the case for example between Zagreb and Mostar. Although the distance
between the two cities is no more than 300 kilometres, the poor, damaged and in
the Yugoslavian civil war undermined public road infrastructure and security
problems absolutely justify the eligibility of this route for an air connection, and
the same considerations apply for the air connection between Zagreb and Sarajevo
(278 kilometres). However, flying the 304 kilometre distance between Prague and
Bratislava is nothing more than an issue of selecting a comfortable travel mode
only because the two capital cities have already been connected by a motorway
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
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Pécs : Centre for Regional Studies, 2010. 45. p. Discussion Papers, No. 80.
and a main international railway line (on some parts allowing trains to run at a
speed of 120–160 kilometres per hour).
* * *
On the basis of our three-part analysis, our answer for the question asked in the
main title is that, regarding the speed of development, the spread of services in
Central and Eastern Europe in the period between the 1930s and the 1980s was
able to keep up with the development progress of air transport of the world (and
Western Europe), especially in building and operating domestic airline networks –
by using large-scale state subsidisation. After the regime change, CIS countries
fell very much behind the world trends while in the Visegrad Four and the West
Balkans, a short stagnation phase was followed by a development trend towards a
long-term closing-up to the developed world. All in all, the air transport of East-
ern Europe is still lagging behind its economic potential. The per unit traffic vol-
ume of airports and the traffic intensity of airlines still show low avionic intensity.
It is not easy to put an end to the paradox resulting from this:
− on the one hand, low air mobility is slowing down the evolution of syner-
gies which could be achieved on the grounds of networking processes, and
it is also an obstacle in the spread of certain globalisation processes, while
− the whole airline sector in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans is
getting increasingly dependent on the heavily profit-oriented actors of the
Western world (Western Europe and America) and East Asia.
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Erdősi, Ferenc : Closing up, Keeping up or Lagging Behind?
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