The Russian Transport Ministry forecasts that passenger traffic of the local airlines would rise by 8% as compared with 2019 in 2021 to 79 million people, Deputy Minister Igor Chalik said on Thursday.

"Basing on 2021 indicators, we expect that the domestic traffic would amount to 79 million passengers, which is higher than in 2019 by about 8%, by almost 6 million," Chalik said.

According to the Federal Air Transport Agency, the traffic of local airlines amounted to 56.2 million people in 2020.