The air services will grow by 7% in 2011, Vesti.ru reports. This forcast has been declared by Deputy Minister of Transport, Valery Okulov, on the sidelines of St. Petersburg Economic Forum.

"The growth rates are good at the moment, about 8% for the period of 5 months", - Okulov stated.

According to him, the growth of the services in Russia exceeds the world’s average indicators.

The passenger traffic of Russian airlines has increased by 26.2% to 56.9 million passengers in 2010 breaking the 18-years record. Ministry of Transport is expecting the increase of passenger traffic up to 61 million passengers this year.

This indicator has increased by 10.6% up to 15.4 million passengers during the period from January to April.

The passenger traffic of the largest Russian airline – Aeroflot, has reached the record level in May owing to the expansion of airline’s route network.

The indicator has increased by 7,2% in a monthly basis to 1.1 million passengers, the company reported. The previous record was hardly over 1 million passengers and it has been set in summer 2010.