Tolmachevo Airport Commercial and Cargo Flight Transfer Hub

Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport is based in Siberia, Russia, and serves as a transfer hub for passenger and cargo routes connecting Europe with China and South East Asia.

It is Russian holding group Novaport’s largest airport and one of the busiest in the Asian part of the Russian Federation. It provides connections for over 2300 city pairs.

The airport’s route network comprises over 100 international and domestic destinations. In 2019, Tolmachevo Airport was used by more than 6.747 million passengers, and, the number of passengers increased by more than 14% by 2018.

Airport transfer hub development

Oneworld alliance member S7 Airlines is the main carrier at Tolmachevo Airport, which is one of its hubs. The airline operates regular flights to more than 75 destinations. Since April 2017, the airline has been operating the Embraer E-170 aircraft, connecting regional flights across 35 destinations in the eastern part of the Russian Federation.

The airline actively expands its fleet. In 2018, S7 Airlines upgraded its fleet with Boeing 737MAX and Airbus A 320/321neo aircraft.

The airline has been helping enhance the development of the airport as an international hub with new services. In 2018-2019, S7 Airlines launches regular flights to Bangkok, Tokyo, Sanya, Nha Trang, Guangzhou and some new domestic routes.

Transfer hub for flights between China and Europe

Currently, the airport is implementing a set of activities required for the development of the airport as a transfer gateway, in particular, airport transfer project is implemented in cooperation with S7 Airlines and other partner airlines. The share of transfer passengers in the total passenger traffic of the airport has already risen from 10% in 2015 to 26% in 2019.

To encourage Chinese visitors, Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport developed a Chinese version of its website. The airport features translated information signs and terminal announcements in Chinese. In June 2018, the airport was certified as China Friendly according to Russia’s programme to promote Chinese tourism. The airport has successfully confirmed its certification in December 2019.

Transfer passengers arriving or departing from the People’s Republic of China totalled over 88,000 in 2019. Direct passenger traffic to Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport from the cities People’s Republic of China increased in 2019 by 6% to 255,000 passengers.

In 2019 Chinese destinations from OVB include scheduled flights to Hong Kong, Beijing, Sanya, Urumchi, Harbin, Guangzhou and Shanghai.

An agreement between the Russian Government and the People’s Republic of China on visa-free group travel has significantly enhanced passenger traffic. By the end of 2019, a total of 40,000 passengers travelled from China to Novosibirsk under the visa-free travel directive (30% higher than in 2018).

Airport transfer hub development

It is planned to implement the Reconstruction of the International and Domestic Airlines Passenger Terminal of Novosibirsk International Airport (Tolmachevo) by 2025 in two stages with the completion of the first, main stage in 2022. The construction is expected to start in May 2020.

By 2022, the airport plans to increase passenger traffic to 10 million a year. The approximate total area of the new passenger terminal complex after the implementation of the two stages should be more than 100,000m².

It should be noted that Novosibirsk Tolmachevo Airport is one of the main transit stops for cargo flights between China, South East Asia and Europe. Domestic and international freight airlines serve the airport, including Cargolux, Lufthansa Cargo and AirBridgeCargo, with 40-45 transit flights a week.

Russian Post processing centre

Тhe initial stage of construction of a new Logistics postal centre (LPC) is near completion in mid-2020. The LPC will serve 11 million residents of the Siberian region. A location of the post processing centre at the Tolmachevo airport will allow unloading post items from the boards of the arriving aircraft directly, and this must reduce the time for transportation of post to the recipient.

The new state-of-the-art LPC with an area of more than 48,000m² will be equipped with the most modern post processing equipment such as automated sorting lines, which will be able to process up to one million shipments per day. In addition, the launch of the logistics postal centre will provide jobs for about 1,300 inhabitants of the region. The new logistics hub will be characterised by a high degree of process automation and the ability to produce both import and export operations for sending parcels and goods on customer orders through Russian online stores from specially designated storage areas.

About Novaport Group

Novaport Group is one of the largest airport holdings in the Russian Federation. It operates 18 airports in Russia. The company has been implementing airport renovation and construction projects for more than ten years. The total investment in the airport infrastructure has amounted over RUR32bn.

In 2019 total passenger traffic at the group’s airports overcame 24 million passengers, which forms 11% of the total number of passengers handled across the country’s airports.

The group started operating Saransk airport in 2019.