October 3, 2022 — Following Vladimir Putin’s announcement on 21^st September of a partial mobilisation in Russia, the first since World War 2, bookings on Russia outbound flights soared. Tickets issued for Russian outbound travel in the 7 days after the announcement (21-27 Sept) were 27% over the level they were in previous 7 days.

The share of one-way tickets jumped from 47% the week before to 73% in the week of 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 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%).”

Olivier Ponti, VP Insights, ForwardKeys, said: “These numbers are quite remarkable and correlate with reports at the time of a sudden increase in ticket sales.”