Currently, the Irish airline is the only one that has announced that it is ready to return to the Ukrainian market, but many European airlines emphasize that they are following the development of events and the situation in Ukraine. Despite Ryanair’s announcement, all airlines are currently in the same position as Ukrainian airspace is closed. At the same time, the Civil Aviation Agency of Ukraine is working on various plans that would facilitate the opening of Ukrainian airspace. If the security situation allows, the first regions where air traffic could resume would be in Western Ukraine – Lviv airport.
LTV spoke to several European airlines that operated flights to and from various Ukrainian airports before the start of the war in Ukraine by Russia. One of the most active and busiest networks from Europe to Ukraine belonged to the Polish national airline “LOT Polish Airlines”, which operated regular flights not only to both Kyiv airports and Lviv, but also to Odesa, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv.
Photo: Kārlis Miksons / Latvian Television
“Ukrainian market accounted for about 10% of the total number of flights,” the airline’s representative, Krzysztofs Moczulskis, admits in the conversation.
“We can’t wait to return to the Ukrainian market that we love so much and connect Ukraine with the rest of the world, but currently the security situation dictates its own rules. While Ukrainian airspace is closed, of course we cannot fly, but we help Ukraine in other ways,”
says Moczulski.
Currently, “LOT” has created a special program in which work is provided for flight attendants of the Ukrainian airline company “Ukraine International airlines”. The airline also states that this is the contribution of the Polish airline to the development of Ukrainian aviation, as the flight attendants do not lose their work skills.
Given that the military operations of Russian forces in Ukraine are unpredictable, no one is in a hurry to predict how safe Ukrainian airspace is in any particular region.
Photo: Kārlis Miksons / Latvian Television
The German national airline “Lufthansa” LTV also admits that the situation in Ukraine is continuously monitored.
“We would be very happy to resume flights to Ukraine as soon as possible, but understand that in the conditions of war we cannot clearly predict anything. We do not want to speculate on specific dates, because everything will be determined by the Ukrainian counterattack,”
says Lufthansa representative Thomas Jahnow.
Tonje Sunds, the representative of the Scandinavian airline “SAS”, gives a succinct answer to the question about the resumption of flights on LTV: “We are monitoring the situation and will decide on the resumption of flights after it is safe to operate them.”
Photo: Kārlis Miksons / Latvian Television
The national airline of Latvia “airBaltic” is also following the events in Ukraine. “The national airline of Latvia is ready to resume flights to its destinations as soon as Ukrainian airspace or part of it is internationally recognized as safe for civil flights.” Before the war started by Russia in Ukraine, “airBaltic” provided flights to three destinations in Ukraine – Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa.
Before resuming flights, even if the Civil Aviation Agency of Ukraine were to open the skies of Western Ukraine, opinions should be received not only from the Civil Aviation Agency of Latvia, but also from the European Aviation Safety Agency.
“If the aforementioned safety conditions were ensured, airBaltic would be interested in resuming flights initially to Lviv,”
acknowledges the airline, at the same time stating that before each flight the company will carry out a safety risk assessment for flights, as well as evaluate a specific destination.
The European Aviation Safety Agency admits that it cooperates with representatives of Ukraine not only to ensure the safe opening of the airspace, but also to introduce the latest standards adopted in the European Union in the supervision of civil aviation. Until now, Ukraine was a member of the “Pan-European” program of the European Aviation Safety Agency.
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2023-07-30 11:53:33
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