Russia's national airline Aeroflot has received an operator's license for its new low-cost airline Pobeda ("victory") and on Tuesday began selling tickets to six destinations, Aeroflot said in a statement.
The budget carrier will offer daily flights from Moscow to Volgograd, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Tyumen and Belgorod, the statement said. The airline's maiden flight will take place on Dec. 1 from Moscow's Vnukovo Airport, and its cheapest one-way ticket will cost 999 rubles ($21).
Pobeda is Aeroflot's second attempt this year to create a budget carrier — a business model that is ubiquitous in Europe but has yet to make inroads in the Russian market.
The first low coster, Dobrolyot ("good flight"), was grounded in August after a mere two months of operations after the EU slammed sanctions in the company for flying to the recently annexed Crimean Peninsula. Dobrolyot had been leasing its Boeing planes from a European company that was forced to tear up the contract.
Undeterred by Dobrolyot's demise, Aeroflot announced in October that it would register a new airline under the name Pobeda — a word closely associated with the triumph over fascism in World War II. The new airline does not offer flights to Crimea.
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