OREANDA-NEWS. Transaero Airlines has launched its Wishing Well charity project, which is part of Transaero Privilege, its loyalty programme for frequent flying passengers.

Wishing Well allows the airline's passengers who are members of the loyalty programme to provide support to one of the four charitable partner organisations of the airline: the Foundation of Konstantin Khabenskiy, 'Maria's Children' Art Center, 'Creation' Charity Fund and 'AdVita' Charity Foundation.

The project allows passengers to use points accumulated from Transaero Privilege to fund the transport for children with serious illnesses. The points also go towards tickets for doctors travelling for professional training purposes, in order to improve their ability to provide early diagnosis and treatment of serious diseases. In addition to this, the project will allow Transaero's passengers to provide support to children from orphanages and boarding schools; gifted children from low-income families; volunteers conducting trainings and workshops with children with special needs and health problems. In addition to this, thanks to the AdVita fund, participants of the Wishing Well project will provide access to air transport for people over 21 years old with severe diseases requiring treatment or rehabilitation.

The airline has launched the Wishing Well project in response to the strong interest from its passengers to be more involved in charitable practices. The airline regards it as one of its mission statements to create the most favourable conditions to carry out such initiatives.

Passengers can transfer an unlimited number of points to each of the four charities - a feature of the Wishing Well project that differentiates from other similar programmes, which usually set limits.

Olga Pleshakova, CEO Transaero Airlines, said: "I am certain that with the participation of our frequent flying passengers in the Wishing Well project, we will be able to help even more children and adults in need. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to those passengers of our airline who have supported the introduction of this programme. Their kind heartedness is another proof of how strong and integral the tradition of charity is in our society."

The achievements of Transaero in the development of CSR programmes have been recognized by a number of national awards. In November 2014, Transaero's corporate charity programme and its Flight of Hope project were shortlisted among the top three charitable programmes in Russia in the Leaders in Corporate Philanthropy contest (the only competition in Russia aimed at supporting and promoting corporate charity initiatives). The results of the competition are based on the annual survey conducted by Vedomosti newspaper, PricewaterhouseCoopers and the non-profit partnership Forum of Donors.

This December the Russian Managers Association granted Transaero Airlines the People Investor award for 'Community Development', recognising the results of the implementation of its Flight of Hope project, carried out by Transaero in cooperation with Life Line charitable foundation from November 2013. It enables passengers to make donations during flights for the treatment of children suffering from serious illnesses. Over 3.5 million rubles have been raised during the first year of the project's implementation, which funded high-tech surgeries for 21 children across the country.