Airline flights within Russia cost too much because there is little competition on routes so the country's antitrust authorities should take action, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Sunday.

In an interview broadcast on Channel One television, the prime minister was asked why a ticket from Moscow to Kamchatka and back is twice the price of a Moscow-New York round-trip ticket.

"I think that this [the high cost of tickets] is connected with the fact that here, domestically, our main carriers don't have the kind of competition there is on international routes," Putin said.

"There, they are forced to do it and they find it possible to change prices and tariffs. But here, they find a lot of reasons and justifications why it cannot be done," he said.

"Here, I think, the Antimonopoly Service should behave more actively," said the prime minister.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service last year fined several oil companies for keeping the price of jet fuel artificially high, although almost all the charges were dismissed on appeal.

MOSCOW, August 29 (RIA Novosti)