Ural Airlines

Ural Airlines (Ура́льские авиали́нии, Ural’skiye avialinii) is an airline based in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia, that operates scheduled and chartered domestic and international flights out of Koltsovo International Airport. In 2018, the company transported nine million passengers.

Overview
The airline was founded in 1943 as Sverdlovsk State Air Enterprises, and later became part of Aeroflot, the Soviet state airline, being in charge of Yekaterinburg Airport. Following the split-up of Aeroflot, Ural Airlines became a joint stock company incorporated under the laws of the Russian Federation on 28 December 1993, and the airline business was separated from the airport.

In 2010, Ural Airlines retired all of its Antonov An-24s, Ilyushin Il-86s and Tupolev Tu-154B-2s. The airline's Tupolev Tu-154M, in 164-seat two-class configuration, was retired on October 16, 2011.

Ural Airlines has 3348 employees.

As of 2012, the airline also planned to buy a training complex for the Airbus A330-300.

In 2017, Skytrax gave Ural Airlines 3 stars, which made it the fourth airline with three stars in Russia and CIS after S7 Airlines, Uzbekistan Airlines and Air Moldova.

Currently, the main hubs of Ural Airlines are Moscow-Domodedovo and Yekaterinburg. Ural Airlines has plans to increase its number of hubs, by developing hubs at Moscow-Sheremetyevo and Moscow-Zhukovsky.

In 2020, flights commenced to Russian-controlled Crimea.

In 2024, Ural Airlines was added to the European Union's sanctions list for transporting military personnel during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Corporate affairs
A million passengers per year was first achieved in 2006. Since then, the airline and its passenger numbers have both grown. In 2013, the airline transported 4.419 million passengers, the sixth most in Russia that year.

Destinations
As of November 2023, the airline serves 11 countries on 138 routes.

Codeshare agreements
Ural Airlines has codeshare agreements with the following airlines:


 * Azerbaijan Airlines
 * Belavia
 * Czech Airlines
 * KLM
 * Red Wings Airlines
 * S7 Airlines
 * Uzbekistan Airways

Current fleet
, the Ural Airlines fleet consists of the following aircraft:

Fleet development
Ural Airlines also started considering updating its fleet with newer Airbus A320neo family or Boeing 737 Next Generation and is still considering purchasing Airbus A330. It took delivery of its first Airbus A320neo in August 2019. The airline also considered purchasing Irkut MC-21s, but the plans were probably withdrawn. In 2022 Air Lease Corporation are seeking to recover one A320neo and one A321ceo, as the lease payments are not being made. In December 2023 an agreement was reached with leasing company AerCap to buy 19 Airbus planes, with help from the Russian National Wealth Fund.

Accidents and incidents

 * On 15 August 2019, Ural Airlines Flight 178, an Airbus A321 registered as VQ-BOZ, was scheduled to fly from Zhukovsky International Airport to Simferopol. 226 passengers and 7 crew were on board. The aircraft suffered a bird strike shortly after takeoff and made an emergency landing in a cornfield less than 3 nmi from the runway with its landing gear up. Although 74 passengers sought medical treatment, only 1 major injury occurred, and all passengers survived.
 * On 12 September, 2023, Ural Airlines Flight 1383, an Airbus A320 registered as RA-73805, was scheduled to fly from Sochi International Airport to Omsk Tsentralny Airport. 159 passengers were on board. On approach into Omsk a hydraulic failure was reported. The aircraft successfully landed in a field near Kamenka Village in Ubinsky District, 180 km from Novosibirsk. No injuries or fatalities have been reported.

Passenger discrimination
In August 2023, a scandal broke out when wider public learned that one of the airline employees of Tatar ethnicity was for several years extorting money from passengers. The employee had used various excuses, particularly that passengers had to pay extra for luggage that was nevertheless undersize and underweight. He did not discriminate only against passengers from Tatarstan and North Caucus regions as he himself boasted on his social networks accounts.