Posted on 08/27/2004 4:25:42 PM PDT by Flavius
As the nation observed a day of mourning for the 89 victims in Tuesday's dual plane crashes, the travel industry on Thursday barely registered a change in people's willingness to fly.
"Our people are not subject to panic. If they are heading out on vacation, the majority will go," said Irina Tyurina, spokeswoman for the Russian Tourism Union.
Airlines and tour agencies said they have had very few cancellations, if any.
"We have had only two cancellations. Bookings are at the same levels as before," said Irina Savelyeva, general director of Alean, which specializes in domestic travel and sells package tours to Sochi, the destination of the ill-fated Sibir airliner with 46 people on board.
Savelyeva said that the agency's phones have been ringing off the hook.
"But there are no hysterics -- just some confusion. People call for advice on what to do, to see what alternatives they have, whether they can travel by train," she said.
"As of today I can definitely say that there have been no cancellations. ... It is unlikely that [the crashes] will affect tourism flows," said Yelena Voyevodina, head of Roza Vetrov, another tour agency with a focus on travel to destinations in southern Russia.
Airlines also said they were not experiencing any decline in passengers.
"There are practically no cancellations -- nothing that would differ from regular statistics," said Mikhail Koshman, deputy director of Sibir.
The airline has said it will accept cancellations without penalty until Aug. 28.
Irina Dannenberg, a spokeswoman for Aeroflot, said the airline has not had a single cancellation because of the disasters.
Dannenberg recalled that there was also no drop in air travel after 71 people died in a midair collision of a Bashkir Airlines plane and a DHL freighter over Germany in 2002.
"It's sad, but we are beginning to get used to tragedies," Voyevodina said.
The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks threw the global airline business into a slump, which was exacerbated by the SARS scare and the war in Iraq.
But Russian airlines rode out the crisis, reporting continuous growth in traffic and earnings.
In the first half of this year, passenger numbers have already grown by 20 percent.
Industry experts do not believe that number will drop because of the latest tragedies in the air.
"People will just be more cautious in the next two weeks," Tyurina said.
"And if nothing terrible happens, they will head for their autumn vacations."
i dont know look at the TU-bathroom topic
With recent memories of mass murder, oppression, persecution, and famine due to their government... fear of terrorists takes second place to fear of their own government. In other words, business as usual.
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