Quote Originally Posted by Daveuk View Post
Moses - that surprises me - I was assuming that nearly all Russian tourist flights would now have ceased due to the Ukraine war. But you obviously know what you are talking about.
There is EU-Russia mutual sanctions exchange - no direct flights to EU. There are also cancelation of aircraft certification in EU register, but Russia has own register and certification, so at past 3 months all Russian aircrafts were deregistered in EU and registered in Russian register. Also there was troubles with leased aircrafts, but it was overstepped via creating formally Turkish air company what isn't under sanctions.

This volume of tourists is typical for Russian summer vacation time - before virus, in 2019, over 7 mln Russian tourists had visits to Turkey, in peak time there were over 800 flight per week in July-September vacation time, the most hot week was last week of August, when parents with kids flew back to Russia before school season, that starts here at September 1 - at that week there were almost 900 flights.

In this season all hotels in Turkey started to accept Russian MIR payment system's cards, many banks and shops in Istanbul, Antalya and Izmir accepts direct payment in cash in rubles. Till high season in SEA region Russia still has time to connect MIR to payments systems in Thailand and Indonesia - second and third most popular countries for winter vacations among Russians after Egypt, because right now Russians have option to pay only by Chinese owned UnionPay system's cards, or by foreign Mastercard/VISA issued in "friendly" countries or by cash.