Ryanair has issued an announcement that it has cancelled its planned Ukraine entry citing Kiev airport’s failure to honour an agreement reached in March of this year at the Ministry of Infrastructure with airport officials and the current Airport Director General, Mr Riabikin,
RyanAir also points out that Kiev airport has instead elected to protect high fare airlines which includes Ukraine International Airlines. In a thinly veiled jibe at Kiev Airport, the low cost carrier accuses it of ” depriving Ukrainian consumers/visitors access to Europe’s lowest air fares and widest route network.”
As a result, Ryanair has cancelled 4 new Kiev routes and 7 new Lviv routes, which it says “will result in the loss of over 500,000 passengers and 400 jobs”.
The airline apologised to any customers who booked flights to/from the Ukraine and refunded all the fares for their cancelled flights.
Ryanair’s Chief Commercial Officer, David O’Brien said:
“On behalf of Ukrainian visitors and consumers, we regret that Kiev Airport has demonstrated that Ukraine is not yet a sufficiently mature or reliable business location to invest valuable Ryanair aircraft capacity. Kiev Airport’s failure to honour commitments will result in the loss of over 500,000 customers and 400 airport jobs in the first year alone, which would have provided a significant boost to the Ukrainian economy. We regret also that Lviv Airport has fallen victim to Kiev Airport’s decision.
Ryanair will now transfer this capacity to competing markets, such as Germany, Israel and Poland instead. Ryanair will grow from 130 million passengers this year to 200 million passengers by 2024 and retains the hope that Ukraine might participate in this growth at some point in the future.”
