Following Vladimir Putin’s announcement on 21st September of a partial mobilisation in Russia, the first since World War 2, bookings on Russia outbound flights soared. Tickets issued for Russian outbound travel in the 7 days after the announcement (21-27 Sept) were 27% over the level they were in previous 7 days.
The share of one-way tickets jumped from 47% the week before to 73% in the week of announcement.
The cities that were most booked were: Tbilisi - GE (up 629% week-over-week), Almaty - KZ (up 148%), Baku - AZ (up 144%), Belgrade - RS (up 111%), Tel Aviv Yafo - IL (up 86%), Bishkek - KG (up 84%), Yerevan - AM (up 69%), Astana - KZ (up 65%), Khudzhand - TJ (up 31%) and Istanbul - TR (up 27%).
60% of tickets issued had the travel date within 15 days of purchase, while for tickets purchased in previous week, that share was 45%. This caused average lead times to shorten from 34 to 22 days.
Focusing only on one-way tickets, destination cities that were grew the most, week-on-week were: Tbilisi - GE (up 654%), Almaty - KZ (up 435%), Belgrade - RS (up 206%), Baku - AZ (up 201%), Astana - KZ (up 187%), Bishkek - KG (up 149%), Istanbul - TR (up 128%), Tel Aviv Yafo - IL (up 127%), Dubai - UAE (up 104%) and Yerevan - AM (up 94%).”
Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys, said: “These numbers are quite remarkable and correlate with reports at the time of a sudden increase in ticket sales.”