MINSK, 26 October (BelTA) – Belavia is planning to fly to more Ukrainian destinations, BelTA learned from Igor Cherginets, Deputy Director General for Marketing and Foreign Economic Affairs at OAO Belavia airline.
“If such a necessity arises we will expand the geography of our flights from Minsk to other airports of Ukraine, in addition to Kiev and Odessa,” he noted.
Starting from 25 October Belavia performs three flights to Ukraine: two to Kiev and one to Odessa. Igor Cherginets noted that in terms of flight frequency Russia is the leader, Ukraine is taking the second position.
As was reported, Ukraine banned flights by Russian companies to Ukraine, and also banned, partially or completely, transit flights by Russian air carriers across the country. Russia closed sky to Ukraine in response to the flight ban.
“When Russian and Ukrainian air companies stopped selling tickets, we saw that our ticket sales started growing. We took a decision to use bigger capacity planes like Boeing737-300 for 148 seats instead of CRJ-200 for 50 seats,” Igor Cherginets noted. The company also uses Embraer-175 for 76 seats on the route to Kiev. “In the future, depending on the popularity of the route we will see which aircraft to use,” Igor Cherginets said. He noted that the frequency of flights between the Ukrainian and Belarusian capital cities may be increased too. This week Belavia will raise this issue with the Belarusian air authorities. “Now there is a restriction in place – two flights for Ukraine and Belarus per day. Belavia will submit a proposal to increase the flight frequency,” Igor Cherginets informed.
As of 25 October, Ukraine International Airlines performs two flights to Minsk daily (one flight per day before).
The mutual flight bans that Ukraine and Russia imposed on each other on 25 October will not lead to the redistribution and cancellation of flights in Belarus, Vladimir Kostin, director of the aviation department at the Ministry of Transport and Communications of Belarus, told reporters earlier. "This will in no way affect the redistribution of flights or their cancellation. We think that we will cope with a possible increase in the passenger traffic flow,” said the department head. According to him, the authorities discussed and examined how the situation may evolve should the passenger flows from Ukraine to Russia and from Russia to Ukraine go through Belarusian airports. “We are ready for everything,” said Vladimir Kostin.
He noted that the air terminal of Minsk National Airport was renovated ahead of the IIHF World Ice Hockey Championship. Now it can accommodate 5.8 million passengers per year. "Today, we have not yet reached three millions. According to our estimates, the possible increase in passenger traffic from Kiev to Moscow and vice versa will be 5 or 8% at the maximum," added Vladimir Kostin.
