Russian carrier Transaero Airlines has launched scheduled flights between Moscow and Taipei in a move to boost business and leisure connectivity between Russia and Taiwan. The new link was launched on July 2, 2014 with the inaugural flight arriving at Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport to a customary water cannon salute the following day.

The weekly service, operated by a two-class Boeing 767-300ER, represents the return of a link first served by Transaero in 2002 and served up until October 2004. This was originally flown from Domodedovo Airport in the Russian capital but is now being served every Wednesday from Vnukovo Airport.

Transaero expects a high demand for the route which it says was proved by the load factor on the inbound flights from Taiwan, which is estimated to be around 90 per cent. The first flight was operated independently by the Russian carrier but from this coming week will be flown under a codeshare with China Airlines.

Despite no non-stop scheduled air services for almost the past ten years around 27,000 bi-directional O&D passengers flew between the Russian Federation and Taiwan in 2013, up 10.3 per cent on the previous year and almost double the figure recorded when Transaero previously served the route.

Transaro has seen rapid growth since it was established in 1991 and is now the second largest carrier in the Russian Federation. In 2013, Transaero it carried 12.5 million passengers and now ranks among the top 30 airlines in the world and the top 10 in Europe in terms of passenger turnover. It currently operates a fleet of 99 aircraft including twenty Boeing 747s, fourteen Boeing 777s, sixteen 767s, forty four 737s, three Tupolev Tu-214 and two Tu-204-100C aircraft.

In our analysis, below, we highlight the growth of Transaero’s domestic and international network capacity over the past ten years. In the ten year period up until 2013 the carrier's capacity rose from 1,424,109 seats to 10,680,103 seats. Published schedules for the current calendar year suggest this will rise 12.2 per cent in 2014.