Kogalymavia started operations in May 1993. After 2005, the airline operated mostly international charter services to leisure destinations, under the brand name Kolavia. In May 2012, Kogalymavia changed its marketing branding from Kolavia to Metrojet, as part of its newly-established joint venture with TUI Russia & CIS, a subsidiary of the German tourism company TUI Travel. Up until August 2014, when the joint-venture was terminated, Metrojet operated on behalf of TUI, and flew independently from then on. On 31 October 2015, a Metrojet Airbus A321-200, operating as charter Flight 9268, crashed on the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people on board. It was determined that the crash was caused by an explosive device that had almost certainly been placed on the aircraft by a member of the ground crew at Sharm El Sheikh. On 5 December 2015, Metrojet suspended all remaining operations after a significant decrease in passenger numbers, due to the aforementioned incident and doubts about the security situation at its primary leisure destinations in Egypt. It announced a review of all operations and said it might resume services in summer 2016. However, it filed for bankruptcy in March 2016.
Destinations
Metrojet operated the following routes by the time it ceased operations: ;from Moscow-Domodedovo:
;from Vladivostok:
Fleet
The Kogalymavia fleet included the following aircraft, as of August 2016:
Retired fleet
Metrojet and its predecessor Kolavia also operated the following aircraft in the past:
1 January 2011: Flight 348. A fire broke out on one of the engines of a Tupolev Tu-154B-2, tail number RA-85588, before taxiing. The aircraft had 116 passengers and 8 crew on board, and was due to operate a flight, a Surgut–Moscow service. It was evacuated seconds before the flames engulfed the fuselage. Three people were killed and 43 passengers injured.
31 October 2015: Flight 9268, an Airbus A321-200 charter flight with 224 people on board, en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to Saint Petersburg, crashed on the Sinai Peninsula. All 217 passengers and seven crew members perished. The Russian Federal Security Service announced on 17 November that it was a terrorist attack, caused by an improvised bomb containing the equivalent of up to 1 kilogram of TNT that detonated during the flight. The Russians said they had found explosive residue as evidence. This air crash was named as the biggest and the most fatal in the history of the airline, Russian and Soviet aviation; and the Airbus A320 family's history.
