Taking Flight On a Budget.

(From The Moscow Times)

Marina Bukalova's office looks out on a peaceful country landscape of trees and blue skies rather than clogged streets of central Moscow. But once every 10 minutes, a deafening sound fills the building as planes land and take off at the neighboring Vnukovo Airport. A whole floor of this former Soviet-style hotel is taken up by 2-year-old Sky Express, the first Russian low-cost airline.

Bukalova was only 29 when she was offered the opportunity to develop Sky Express. "When I look back, sometimes it seems like a feat that I would not want to undertake again," she says. But back in 2006, when she was working for the airline alliance AiRUnion, she jumped at the chance to find out the answer to the question everyone in the industry was asking -- is it possible to create a Russian low-cost carrier?

Since its first flight took off in January 2007, the company has increased its fleet from two to nine Boeings and vaulted up the ranks to become the seventh-largest Russian airline in terms of passenger volume, according to the company's 2007 annual report. Bukalova says the results even exceeded the expectations of her team.

Before settling in Moscow, Bukalova lived in many different corners of the former Soviet Union. "I grew up in Baku and thought it was the best city in the country. It was an international mix of Azeris, Russians, Armenians and Jews, a uniquely kind city." When she became a student in the gloomy St. Petersburg of 1994, Bukalova was shocked to see drunks in the streets and to pay separately after having lunch with a college friend. "In Baku, there was no notion of 'mine' and 'yours,' everyone just shared what they had," she remembers.

The good old days in sunny Baku ended for Bukalova's family when many employers started requiring Azeri language skills, and her parents relocated to the far northern city of Murmansk -- about as dramatic a change in climate as was possible in the former Soviet Union. Bukalova joined them there after earning her engineering degree at the St. Petersburg Institute of Civil Aviation.

Sky ExpressUnder Bukalova, Sky Express has become the seventh-largest airline in Russia."I chose to work for the small Murmansk Airlines rather than going to a big city because that way I could observe all the processes in the company," she says. Swerving off the beaten track seems to be Bukalova's tactic: In school, she wanted to study finance but decided in favor of a more ...