Somon Air (SZ, Dushanbe) is planning to diversify its business away from the current dependence on the traffic between Russia and Tajikistan, CEO Thomas Hallam told Routes Online.

Hallam said that while traffic to and from Russia remains key for the time being, the market situation is fraught with problems and political tensions. Occasionally - as it happened earlier this year - this results in temporary traffic rights restrictions or withdrawals. In addition, Somon Air has to compete with much larger Russian carriers, such as S7 Airlines, UTair, and Ural Airlines.

Hallam said that instead of focussing on Russia, the carrier could shift more capacity to Central Asia, including Uzbekistan and Afghanistan which both have large Tajik minorities.

"In Uzbekistan, there are 15 million Tajik people split between Tashkent, Bukhara, and Samarkand. Those are clear destinations that we are looking at and have negotiated rights for. We’ve got Afghanistan, which has more than ten million Tajik. There’s Pakistan as well – Islamabad International or Karachi International - and we know that the Indian market could be a good one for us," Hallam said.

Somon Air currently operates six aircraft - two each of B737-300s, B737-800s, and B737-900(ER)s. It also plans to add four E190-E2s.