Starting next month, some of Russia’s airlines will not be allowed to fly to Ukraine, the Ministry of Infrastructure announced in a press release statement on its website on Sept. 25.
“Under the instruction of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the State Aviation Service of Ukraine began to inform Russian airlines that are in the sanctions list, that they will not be allowed to perform their flights to Ukrainian cities starting from the beginning of the winter period of 2015-2016 period,” the press service wrote.
Although Ukraine did not officially state which airlines are under the list, a leaked sanctions list statement released on Sept. 18 mentioned around twenty Russian airlines including Russia’s state-owned Aeroflot, Tranaero, Rossiya, Orenair, VIM Airlines, Ural Airlines, and S7 Airlines.
Earlier this week, Russian airline expert Vladimir Tasun estimated that the sanctions would cost Russia millions of dollars, TASS, a Russian media source, reported on Sept. 17.
“Some airline industry specialists estimate that the losses to the Russian market could be approximately 500 million rubles a month,” Oleh Marchenko, partner at law firm Marchenko Danevych who consults airline companies, says.
The airlines will be blocked from entering and flying through Ukraine to European countries. In turn, flying via other routes will be more costly for Russian airlines. “That will certainly lead to significant loses to the Russian airlines, essentially to the whole Russian airlines industry,” Marchenko says.
But Ukraine will also face losses if Russia will retaliate.
“It’s probable that Russia will respond and impose similar penalties on Ukrainian aviation.” This will put “significant” losses for Ukraine as well, Marchenko says. But the overall effect will be small on Ukraine’s airlines market since the share of Russia-Ukraine flights is not that big, he added.
The main pain will be felt by Russian airlines even if Ukraine faces a backlash from Russia, since routes to European countries will be more costly. “That would probably be the most lost that would cost the Russian airlines industry,” Marchenko says.
But if Russia does not retaliate, that will give some Ukrainian companies, such as Ukrainian International Airlines, advantage since customers would go to Ukrainian airlines.
Ukraine’s largest airport Boryspil International Airport told the Kyiv Post that out of more than 100 companies only 3 major Russian airline companies – Aeroflot, Sibir, Rossiya – do business with them.
Russia airlines transferred 303,000 customers to Ukraine and received 287,000 people during the January-June period of this year, Russia’s Tasun said on Sept. 25, Interfax news reports.
Kyiv Post staff writer Ilya Timtchenko can be reached at [email protected].
