The story
This alliance was established as AirBridge. In October 2004 Russian airlines KrasAir and Domodedovo Airlines set up a joint management company called AirBridge. KrasAir is owned by the city government of Krasnoyarsk (51%) and AirBridge management (49%) (Boris Abramovich - CEO and his brother, Alexander Abramovich - deputy CEO, no relation to Roman Abramovich). While retaining separate legal identities the airlines were planning to integrate their networks and services, as they are largely complementary. In April 2007 AirBridge had purchased Malév airline from Hungarian government. Boris Abramovich is also a CEO of AirUnion alliance.
The Abramovich brothers' aggressive expansion campaign led to the creation of AiRUnion alliance in 2005, the first airline alliance in Russia. It included KrasAir, Domodedovo Airlines, Omskavia, Samara Airlines and Sibaviatrans. On May 3, 2007 the five members of the AirUnion alliance were rolled into a similarly named holding company, OAO AirUnion, in which the Russian government holds no less than 45% of the shares.
Although Malév was a Oneworld member, in early 2007 AiRUnion began a codeshare with Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa in its strategic expansion into European routes.
AiRUnion was competing with S7 Airlines to become the second largest domestic carrier in Russia in 2007, after Aeroflot. AiRUnion carried 4.9 million passengers in 2006 compared to 8.75 million for Aeroflot.
From Wikipedia’s article on AiRUnion, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3