Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), the largest Ukrainian airlines, saw a 24% rise in passenger transportation in January through June 2016 YoY, to 2.5 million people, UIA President Yuriy Miroshnikov said.
“The results of the first half of the year are successful and optimistic. I can say that UIA continues seeing the upward trend outstripping the market growth. We grew by 24% in H1 2016 YoY, to 2.5 million passengers. According to our estimates, the flight market in Ukraine grew by over 11%”, he said.
He said that one should take a look not only at H1 2016, but H2 2015 to understand the results.
“Among the landmarks for the airline is the launch of a flight to Beijing late April 2015, opening of some medium-haul Eastern European destinations, the partial change of the functioning model for UIA that helped us add two short European flights, such as Minsk, Vilnius, Warsaw and Berlin, between traditional morning and evening flight peaks. Thanks to this, we managed to service more flights with the smaller fleet. Some technological changes were made, in particular, the idle period for aircraft at the hub and transit airports was reduced”, he said.
Miroshnikov said that according to reports of the Boryspil airport, one can see restoration of the market.
“I think that UIA also plays an important role here, as we have launched the regional program. We opened direct international flights from Vinnytsia and Ivano-Frankivsk. This adds to growth of UIA’s volumes and the market growth in general. We were ready to launch similar international programs from Zaporizhia, but the airport did not allocate slots and the project has been frozen”, he said.
UIA was founded in 1992. It is the largest Ukrainian airline. Its home airport is Boryspil (Kyiv). The UIA fleet consists of 37 aircraft. (Interfax/Business World Magazine)
