SINGAPORE, 5 October 2022: Following Vladimir Putin’s announcement on 21 September activating a partial military mobilisation in Russia, the first since World War 2, bookings on outbound flights from Russia soared.
Tickets issued for Russian outbound travel in the seven days after the announcement (21 to 27 September) were 27% over the level they were in the previous seven days.
The share of one-way tickets jumped from 47% the week before to 73% in the week of the 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 the 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%).”
ForwardKeys vice president insights Olivier Ponti said: “These numbers are quite remarkable and correlate with reports at the time of a sudden increase in ticket sales.”
Thé men are paying 5000$ for a short flight out of Russian territory ! They don’t want to fight a war .
Flee from military recruitment.