Foreign Airlines' Wings Clipped By Rouble

<BR>Foreign Airlines represented in St Petersburg are suffering losses.<BR>Even indexing the rouble prices of air tickets against a fixed hard currency price cannot help. At the end of last week, the internal rate in all foreign airlines was 7.50 roubles to the dollar - all the outlets agreed on a single rate.<BR>However, on Monday and Tuesday, real panic took over some of the companies, many of which introduced a rate of 9 roubles to the dollar. Keeping their heads, Swissair, Austrian Airlines and Finnair offered rates of 6.60-6.70 roubles on Monday, and by Wednesday all companies agreed on 7.50 roubles. Many representatives expect that rate to stick for at least a week. "We deliberately chose this route," says KLM St Petersburg Manager Irina Rumyantseva, "We can't allow ourselves to change the price of tickets every half hour." However, one of the largest sources of losses for representative offices is the conversion of roubles into dollars.<BR>According to some airline representatives, the volume of passengers could fall by up to 50% from the normal August level.