MOSCOW, August 31 - RAPSI, Dmitry Shchitov. The Moscow Commercial Court has deemed Avianova airlines administratively liable for flight delays in an action brought by the Moscow Interregional Transport Prosecutors Office, a court official told the Russian Legal Information Agency (RAPSI).

The prosecutors office had sought a 30,000 ruble ($1,000) fine against the airline for five flight delays of over two hours each due to an absence of reserve aircraft on June 14.

This past spring, supervisory authorities performed an extraordinary probe into 1,400 flight delays during the summer of 2010 and winter of 2010 - 2011. In response, the airlines decided to tweak their 2011 summer flight schedule and abandon charter services on some routes.

Avianova began operations in August 2010. Its fleet consists of Airbus A-320 planes. It is based at both the Sheremetyevo (Moscow) and Krasnodar airports. It carried 1.4 million passengers in 2010.