avialot.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod “AVIALOT Air Travel Agency” (OOO “AVS AVIALOT”, i.e. the “Avialot” air travel agency company), which sold air and rail tickets. The imprint in the footer of the home page gave the address “603011, Russia, Nizhny Novgorod, Lenin Avenue, 7” and the telephone number +7 (831) 245-15-61[3]. The earliest web archive snapshot was taken on 4 February 2001; of that version of the page only the agency's name has survived — “AVIALOT Air Travel Agency”[1]. In the nn.ru website directory, through which the domain entered the census, “AVS Avialot” was listed under “Companies (Enterprises) : Tourism, hotels, boarding houses : Air ticket offices” with the description “Air tickets and arrangement of private charter flights”[2].

What the home page looked like

Snapshots from the beginning of 2012 show a menu of thirteen sections: “Air tickets”, “Rail tickets”, “Special offers”, “Guest book”, “Vacancies”, “News”, “Nizhny Novgorod”, “Ticket ordering”, “Timetable”, “Tourism”, “Sales offices”, “About the company”, “Contacts”; in the same list, between “Nizhny Novgorod” and “Ticket ordering”, a link to pogoda.ru.net stood as a separate line[3].

The purchasing procedure was described right on the home page and managed without online payment: the visitor was invited to go to the “Ticket ordering” page, choose a ticket category, fill in the form and send the order, after which an operator would contact the buyer and report on seat availability, ticket prices and delivery time. The site specifically stipulated that “sending an order does not constitute a reservation of tickets”[3].

A noticeable part of the page was taken up by a reference layer. As the home page itself announced, the “updated site” offered information about the airports and railway stations of Moscow, maps of the Moscow, St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod metro systems, contact details of Russian and foreign airlines, explanations of how to read an air ticket and a railway ticket, and descriptions of aircraft types; in the tourism section, again in its own words, “a wide selection of tours all over the world was presented”. Comments and suggestions were to be left in the “Guest book”[3].

The agency's own Nizhny Novgorod service was given a separate block on the home page: the “Nizhny Novgorod – Moscow airports” transfer and Aeroexpress tickets “at the ticket offices of the Avialot agency”; in the same block the page wished the visitor pleasant travels[3].

The news and special-offer feeds give a dated cross-section of Nizhny Novgorod air routes at the beginning of 2012. On 23 January 2012 the home page carried a notice that the airline Ural Airlines would introduce a new scheduled Nizhny Novgorod — Yerevan — Nizhny Novgorod flight from 7 March[3]; in the March snapshot another item from the same airline already stood in that place, dated 29 February: about a new scheduled Nizhny Novgorod — Prague — Nizhny Novgorod flight, introduced from 28 February[4]. The change of news item between the February and March snapshots is direct evidence that the page was being maintained rather than posted once and left. The special offer stayed longer: in both February and March the home page still carried Lufthansa with flights to Europe “from 5840 RUB”, dated 11 January 2012[3][4].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the summer of 2002 the “Air ticket offices” category of the nn.ru directory held only three sites — OOO “KDO AVIA”, “ExoTour” and “AVS Avialot” — and all three had “Rating: none” in the rating line[2]. avialot.ru is likewise absent from the collected snapshots of the Counter.nn.ru rating and from the materials of Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day of 2004: the domain entered the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating through the nn.ru directory rather than through the counter. The public ratings of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet passed the site by, even though it was itself still working and being updated ten years later.

The fate of the domain

The snapshots collected for this article break off in March 2012, and from them it is impossible to say exactly when the Nizhny Novgorod version of the site disappeared. Something else is certain: by 22 January 2022 an entirely different resource stood at avialot.ru — an aggregator headed “Air ticket sales” with a Moscow address, “Moscow, Pervomayskaya Street, 58”, the telephone number +7 (495) 432-49-92, the copyright line “2017-2022” and the note “Date of creation: 21.01.2022”[5]. Neither the “Avialot” agency nor any Nizhny Novgorod contacts remained on that page.

The domain probe taken for the census shows that since 2024 avialot.ru has served a parking page; the title of the page at the last check was “Airline tickets”. The Nizhny Novgorod air travel agency is no longer at this domain.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — nn.ru directory, the “Air ticket offices” category, 2002 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, February 2012 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, March 2012 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (the domain already with a different owner) (archive)