The implosion of Aerosvit, once Ukraine's biggest passenger carrier, has left a hole in the nation's air travel market. With many of the most lucrative routes remain unassigned, alternative carriers including Wizzair and Air Astana have flocked to pick up connections. Meanwhile, to Ukraine's south, Turkish Airlines, an industry giant in the making is also seeking to expand.
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of
activity for airlines in Ukraine. The Kazakh airline Air Astana on
March 31 launched flights to the nation’s two main cities Astana and
Almaty; FlyGeorgia connects Kyiv and Tbilisi three times a week since
April 2; Aegean Airlines will cover routes to Greece, while Wizzair,
Central Europe’s leading budget airline, has obtained assignments to
Dubai, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Bucharest, Vilnius, Sofia and Kutaisi.
Another player on the market, Ukraine
International Airlines, is widely expected to pick up the bulk of the
most profitable routes to distant international destinations. At
present, Ukrainian legislation only allows local carriers to fly
other connections than to and from Ukraine and an airline’s home
country.
This means transit is the only hope for
international heavyweights to expand their offers to Ukrainian
passengers – explaining the prominence of such major hubs as
Frankfurt, Vienna or London. But further growth on the market may not
be coming from Western airlines, as many might expect, but rather
from their emerging market competitors.
One of those poised to cash in on the
rising incomes of the Ukrainian middle class is Turkish Airlines.
According to Hakan Yilmaz, the airline’s general manager in Ukraine,
local operations saw over 40 percent growth in 2012 – a result he
hopes to match in 2013.
A booming economy and tourism sector
means a growing number of Ukrainians are traveling to Turkey. The
airline currently operates 49 flights per week – from Kyiv, Odesa,
Simferopol, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Lviv to Istanbul.
If authorization is granted, further
connections can be opened linking Istanbul with Kharkiv seven times a
week, and Kyiv to the Turkish capital Ankara three or five times,
Yilmaz adds.
This would benefit both sides he
argues, as Ukraine’s airports are operating with vast unused
capacity. The capital’s main airport Boryspil is arguably the
starkest example: expanded for the Euro 2012 championships, it saw
less 8.5 million passengers last year but could easily accomodate
twice that number.
“Turkish Airlines would like to use
this capacity, not just in Kyiv, but also in Odessa, Simferopol,
Donetsk and other cities,” Yilmaz said.
But while flights to and from Ukraine
are interesting, it is arguably Turkish Airlines’ transfer potential
that presents the greatest promise. The world’s top airline in terms
of country destinations, with 98 nations connected, Yilmaz argued,
Turkish Airlines is clearly positioning itself as a global player.
This is already visible by looking at
Ukrainian passenger flow, he added. At present, 40 percent of
passengers headed to Istanbul fly further internationally, with
another 15 transfer to domestic flights, the airline head said.
One of the catalysts of this expansion
in coming years will certainly be the construction of the Istanbul
New Airport, projected to be finished within the next three years. At
present, Turkish airlines has two hubs around the metropolis –
Ataturk Airport and Sabiha Gokcen airport. The first reached its
capacity of 45 million in 2012, while a decade of double digit growth
in passenger traffic is testing the limits of the second.
At 150 million in capacity, the new
airport will be world’s biggest, topping the current leader,
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta airport’s 95 million in passenger traffic
by more than half. Capitalizing is central location, it will would
exceed the combined capacities of Europe’s current leaders, London’s
Heathrow and Paris’ Charles de Gaulle.
“We try to use Istanbul as a bridge
between East and West. Within three hours flight you can reach 40
countries,” Yilmaz said. “We take passengers from the West and
bring them to the East, and take passengers from the East and bring
them to the West.”
Kyiv Post editor Jakub Parusinski
can be reached at [email protected]
