Weeks after Hungary’s Wizz Air revealed plans to launch the first low-cost airline service in Ukraine, news broke that other foreign airlines are also planning to enter the market.
Weeks after Hungary’s Wizz Air revealed plans to launch the first low-cost airline service in Ukraine, news broke that other
foreign airlines are also planning to enter the market. The arrival of low-cost airline services is expected to significantly cut the price of air travel and comes at an opportune time, just ahead of the Euro 2012 soccer championship to be jointly hosted by Ukraine and Poland.
“Three more foreign companies have set sights on the Ukrainian air transportation market,” said Oleksandr Davydov, head of Ukraine’s State Aviation Administration. Following not too far behind Hungary’s Wizz Air is Germany’s Germanwings and Air Arabia of the United Arab Emirates.
Wizz Air aims to start domestic flights this summer offering one-way tickets at just over $10, followed by one-way flights to European cities between $42-63. Officials at Wizz Air said their company is currently awaiting final approvals by Ukrainian regulators, and hopes to launch its first domestic flight on July 11, a Kyiv-Lviv flight.
Germanwings is also awaiting approvals to offer Kyiv-Berlin and Kyiv-Koln flights starting at 19 Euro. The company has already filed a request with Ukrainian regulators and will launch flights as soon as permissions are granted, said Heinz Joachim Schottes, a Germanwings spokesperson.
Davydov said a meeting with Germanwings, to consider giving them approval, was first planned for June 16, but has been postponed.
Schottes said Germanwings does not, at the moment, plan to launch domestic flights in Ukraine.
“We are for now just trying to get into Ukraine,” he said, adding that his company’s low-cost offers will be very competitive compared to current prices available for airline tickets from Ukraine to Germany. Current prices offered for such flights are double, or triple, what Germanwings will offer.
Next in line is Air Arabia which plans to launch a subsidiary offering services in Ukraine. Air Arabia hopes to launch domestic flights in Ukraine this year, but will first, by autumn, offer lowcost flights between Kyiv and Sharjah, an airport 20 minutes from Dubai. The cost of a oneway ticket is expected to be $200, three times less than current offers.
“[Air Arabia] is also interested in opening an affiliate in Ukraine that will operate five Airbus 320 passenger aircraft for domestic flights,” Davydov added.
Davydov said several other foreign airlines have expressed interest in launching operations to and within Ukraine, including Poland’s Central Wings and a Singaporean company which he would not identify.
Their arrival would come at an opportune time, as passenger traffic is expected to rise by some 40 percent this year, Davydov said, adding that some 2 million passengers could use lowcost airlines flying in and out of Ukraine, by 2009.
It remains uncertain by how much leading airlines operating in Ukraine today will drop prices, if at all.
Serhiy Kutsy, a spokesperson for Aerosvit, one of the two leading airlines in Ukraine along with Ukraine International Airlines, said his company is preparing for the “inevitable” arrival of competition.
Aerosvit claims to already offer some oneway domestic fairs between $1050.
Davydov said that Ukraine’s airports, badly in need of expansion and overhauls, will be able to handle increased traffic in the nearterm. But “new terminals would need to be built” soon to handle increased air traffic in the country.
Anna Poludenko can be reached at [email protected] or 496-4563, ext. 1078.
