Aeroflot Group is to proceed with plans to recruit up to 6,060 ex-Transaero Airlines (Moscow Vnukovo) employees following a Group Board of Directors meeting last week. Broken down, the Group says it is looking at recruiting around 700 pilots; around 1,000 engineering and technical personnel; around 2,800 flight attendants; around 1,200 ground service crew; and around 300 back-office and managerial staff.
Mainline carrier Aeroflot has already begun interviewing nearly 1,000 Transaero staff including 140 flight staff, 604 cabin crew, 61 flight safety experts and 125 back-office staff while Rossiya (FV, St. Petersburg) stands ready to employ more than 3,000 Transaero employees at its newly created Moscow subsidiary. As of October 30, 585 people had been recommended for employment there, the Group said.
Aeroflot Group is also looking to takeover Transaero's EASA-approved line maintenance base at Moscow Vnukovo airport where it will retain up to 1,000 personnel. Transaero leased a hangar at Vnukovo's VARZ-400 MRO hub to carry out airframe technical services on its widebodies. Aeroflot's interest in the facility comes as no surprise given last week's announcement that it will likely lease four ex-Transaero B747-400s from lessor Sberbank.
Though the airline suspended operations last week, investors have continued to express an interest in Transaero with S7 Group reportedly in the process of finalizing its deal to acquire a controlling stake on Friday, October 30. Unofficial reports state S7 will acquire 59% of Transaero's shareholding.
Russia's Gazeta newspaper indicates that should the deal go through, Transaero will be recapitalized and consolidated into the S7 Group alongside S7 Airlines (S7, Novosibirsk) and Globus (Novosibirsk). Billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov is reportedly providing financial support given that his IFC Bank is one of Transaero's minority creditors.
Other proposals include one from Khazanah, the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund and owner of Malaysia Airlines (MH, Kuala Lumpur International), which expressed an interest in partnering a local Russian firm to acquire Transaero and relaunch it as a new Asia-oriented carrier.
RIA president Yurii Spiridonov told Kommersant that talks between RIA representatives, the Malaysians, and bureaucrats from the Ministry of Transport took place earlier this month though no definitive conclusion was reached.
