Czech Airlines will introduce a new service between St. Petersburg and Karlovy Vary as part of the airline’s 2007 summer schedule. Passengers will be able to use the service for the first time on Saturday, June 30th. CSA will be using its newest type of aircraft, the Airbus A320, for this service.

The flights will be departing from the West Bohemian spa resort of Karlovy Vary every Saturday at 2:25 in the afternoon and they will be arriving in St. Petersburg at 6:40 in the evening. The flights from St. Petersburg will depart at 7:25 p.m. local time and arrive in Karlovy Vary at 7:45 p.m. CEST. “The newly launched service between St. Petersburg and Karlovy Vary will be an addition to the existing regular service between Prague and St. Petersburg, which Czech Airlines operates four times per week,” said Libu?e Králová, CSA’s regional manager for St. Petersburg. During the summer season, CSA is offering its flights from Prague to St. Petersburg on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays at 11:30 a.m. with the return flights to Prague departing from St. Petersburg at 4:40 p.m. local time. Besides the service from Prague to St. Petersburg, CSA also has flights between Prague and the Russian cities of Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Samara. In addition, Aeroflot and Czech Airlines code share flights from Moscow to Omsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul and Irkutsk.

Last year, a total of 273,000 passengers traveled on CSA’s flights between the Czech Republic and Russia. This number represented a year-to-year increase of more than 12 percent. The most popular service was the connection between Prague and Moscow. In 2007, CSA is expecting to see a further increase in this demand.

The flights between St. Petersburg and Prague are especially popular with Russian travelers coming to the Czech Republic for both business and pleasure. Due to the increased interest among Russian tourists in the West Bohemian spa resorts, it is expected that the new service to Karlovy Vary will also largely be used by Russians. Notwithstanding, the flights will also be very convenient for Czech business travelers and tourists looking for a connection to Russia’s second largest city. The northern Russian city of St. Petersburg is located on the river Neva and is a popular tourist destination with its many attractions and landmarks - such as the Summer Palace, the Tsarskoye Selo with its famous amber room, the Peter and Paul Fortress, the Hermitage Museum, the Nevsky Prospect and the legendary cruiser Aurora.

Russia is an important market for Czech Airlines and that is why CSA uses its newest type of aircraft -the Airbus A320 - for most of its flights to the Russian Federation. These modern planes offer passengers a greater degree of comfort and the demanding Russian clientele particularly enjoys the high quality of the state-of-the-art business class service offered by CSA to its passengers. Travelers on flights from Russian often have special meal requirements and many of them prefer to have traditional Czech cuisine.

In designing this year’s summer schedule, CSA generally focused on a further rapid improvement to its existing network rather than on the adding of totally new destinations. Thus, as of March 25th, the airline has increased its number of flights to such high demand destinations as Moscow, Brussels, Bologna, Ko?ice, Madrid, Tallinn and Vilnius.
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