Interview: Tatiana Voronovskaya - Aeroflot Bonus Program

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Edition 4: March - May 2006

FFP Online Interview, March 2006:

Tatiana G. Voronovskaya, Bonus Program Manager, Aeroflot Russian Airlines

Tatiana, you’ve just come back from the FFP Conference in Bangkok. Was it worth attending?

TV: Definitely! Most important for me is to meet colleagues and share experiences of how to better present the loyalty program within one’s own airline to prove its efficiency and value.

And I guess you used the opportunity to network with many of your future SkyTeam partners?

TV: Yes, but I should say that for the last year, we worked very closely together in everyday business, as well.

Please tell us a little bit more about where you stand with your FFP integration to SkyTeam, especially on the IT side and regarding your partnerships.

TV: Since the SU entrance into Sky Team, it has been planned for the FFP integration to take place at the beginning of the summer schedule 2006. We have almost completed all IT tasks, done the necessary enhancements and run the testing. All business issues were agreed beforehand in order to allow our IT specialists to better understand their goals.

Where are the biggest challenges for you with this integration? I mean your Bonus program was not really at the forefront of FFP innovations in the past, using an in-house IT system and having no airline partners.

TV: We are looking for our customers’ reaction and behaviour after the merge into Sky Team, then we will be able to see if we managed to make them happy within the Aeroflot Bonus program by introducing changes and new airline partners. From the launch of Aeroflot Bonus, we used the most advanced software suppliers like Unisys Corp. and from March 2005 – Sabre Airline Solutions and this is very helpful in preparing our entrance to Sky Team. What is very important for us now is to bring our members clear and easy-to-understand information about Sky Team alliance and its new benefits. We already see the influence of the Sky Team brand through increasing interest to SU from big players in hospitality and other services and hope to introduce new program partners to our members in the nearest future.

One year ago, you switched from a kilometre to a mileage basis, citing general industry standards. Do you really think that was required? I mean there are many alliance programs, e.g. from your neighbour Finnair, operating successful programs on a kilometre basis.

TV: You are right and in Russia we use the metric system, but all Sky Team airlines use miles and this is one of the requirements to enter the alliance.

How difficult was it to pioneer the FFP system in Russia - certainly not the easiest market for such an exercise?

TV: It was very difficult, as Russians never used such a system and the only kind of loyalty programs offered in the market were discount cards. Even more, the Soviet heritage made people afraid of outside parties maintaining records about them. Maybe this is why our most loyal and active members are people from 22 to 35 years old.

And I also heard that the high-end Russian customer would never enrol in an FFP, because they consider it below their dignity to collect points and redeem them for free flights.

TV: That is right! It was a big problem to enrol those most profitable customers, but we did a good job, together with our travel agents and travel managers, in finding new instruments to attract and make businessmen loyal to us.

Tatiana, thank you very much for giving us these insights and good luck with the work of integrating into SkyTeam in the coming months!

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