Rush begins to secure limited charter aircraft in Russia after World Cup Draw

With the draw now completed, leading aircraft charter specialist, Air Charter Service, says that aircraft charters will be an essential part of logistics for the FIFA World Cup in Russia next year, but there is a race to secure charter aircraft.

Group Director of ACS’s Commercial Jets division, Matthew Purton, commented: “The 2018 championship in Russia throws up a variety of problems with regards to getting people around. Russia is a huge country and the distance between England’s last two group matches is more than 1,000 miles. Driving between Nizhny Novgorod and Kaliningrad is a long coach ride! With only Russian registered airlines being able to perform domestic flights in the country, this drastically limits the choice of aircraft able to transport the teams and fans from hotels and training camps to matches. At some of the slightly smaller airports involved next year, Russian speakers will be needed as the locals will not speak enough English to help with the specific requirements needed for such detailed flight programmes.

“Fortunately we had an excellent ‘practice run’ with the Confederations Cup in June and July of this year, for which ACS flew five of the eight teams involved and made a lot of good contacts. I believe that we are in the best possible position to offer clients the best solutions for next year – we have two offices in Russia, one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. A quarter of the 40 matches in the tournament will be played in those two cities. The fact that we have a Russian bank account will mean easier transactions than those companies using Dollars, Euros or Sterling and we will be looking to position some of our experts on site at the airports to make sure everything runs smoothly.

“Now that the draw is complete for Russia 2018, football associations, supporter groups, sponsors, media and the teams themselves now know where they will need to get to during the tournament and are rushing to secure the limited number of aircraft available.”