British Airways looks for safe landing in Russia, courtesy S7 Airlines

21 Nov 2007

British Airways may link up with Russian carrier, S7 Airlines in order to access Russia''s domestic market. Airline officials have dropped broad hints that earlier announced plans of the Russian carrier, S7 Airlines, to join the Oneworld Alliance, may fructify over the coming year to year and a half. 

S7 had announced its intentions to enter the Oneworld Alliance in the summer of this year.

As of now, British Airways finds it non-productive to generate flights to Britain from Russian regions on its own.

"We are interested in cooperation with the air company that has modern western aircraft and that can guarantee safety of its flights and would be ready to provide us with convenient connection flights to Domodedovo airport", British Airways, regional manager, Andrew Hammans said yesterday.

He also added: "I will not give the name of this air company but if you exclude all companies that do not match the description you can understand easily what company I am talking about."

Apart from British Airways the alliance includes American Airlines, Cathay Pacific Airways, Finnair, Iberia, LAN Airlines, JAL, Royal Jordanian, Malåv Hungarian Airlines, and LAN affiliates, LAN Argentina and LAN Ecuador.

 "At the moment negotiations over cooperation with British Airways are at a consulting stage. Along with that we have been holding negotiations with the other alliance members", deputy PR director of S7, Igor Volkov, said.