When Iryna Semenyuk boarded a plane from Odessa to Kyiv to catch a plane further on to Astana, she was in a great mood, anticipating the fun weekend at film festival with her boyfriend who lives in Kazakhstan.
Little did she know that she will spend the night on June 28 at Kyiv’s Boryspil airport due to a flight cancellation that was never clearly explained, only to be sent back to Odessa on a 7-hour bus ride.
“It seemed like they were unable to handle the extra load with Euro 2012 games underway,” said Semenyuk, who remains stressed out over the ordeal.
Semenyuk is not alone in wondering what’s up with Aerosvit, one of Ukraine’s two top national passenger airline carriers. All too often, passengers started noticing unexplained delays, flight cancellations and below par service weeks before the Euro 2012 games kicked off.
Many football fans that flew to Ukraine for the games on Aerosvit were also outraged after missing games for similar reasons.
When contacted by the Kyiv Post, the airline – owned by billionaire Igor Kolomoisky – could not immediately say how many flights had since spring been cancelled or delayed. But horror stories and complaints from travelers are piling up, signaling that it has become an all-too common.
For example, travelers with tickets for a Kyiv-Warsaw flight complained that they missed the Euro 2012 opening ceremony in Warsaw on June 8 after a 3-hour delay. Fans from Budapest missed the final in Kyiv after their flight was 4 hours late. Hundreds of passengers waited for their delayed flights from Kyiv to Donetsk for hours on June 11, risking missing the France-England game.
In statements, Aerosvit has admitted that 4 planes went out of service in May, adding that the company did not receive two new aircrafts it had purchased as earlier as originally expected.
“Although not the company’s fault, it limited the company’s ability to perform,” said Aerosvit spokesperson Serhiy Kutsy.
However, the trouble within the company appears to have started long before, with pilots going on strike early in the year, staff reporting salaries delays and service souring.
In March, Boryspil airport, for example, temporarily stopped servicing Aerosvit planes after the airline failed to pay its airport fees on time. The incident triggered dozens of flight delays.
In 2011, the company reported Hr 1.45 billion ($181 million) loss, three times more than the year before. The airline claims the losses are linked to new investments, expansion plans.
All the troubles were widely reported in domestic media.
In addition to owning Aerosvit, Kolomoisky is reported to also control several other domestic carriers, and appeared last year to be preparing to unveil a bigger European airline groups, merging them with smaller, newly acquired Scandinavian airlines. In 2011, he purchased three carriers: Swedish Skyway Express, City Airline AB and Danish Cimber Sterling. All have since, however, experienced financial troubles.
Aerosvit’s supervisory board chairman Grigory Gurtovoy, who insiders said manages the airline business for Kolomoisky, did not respond to Kyiv Post inquiries.
But an informed source close to the airlines management said on condition of anonymity that the bankruptcy of some of the newly acquired Scandinavian airlines is related to Kolomoisky’s aim to “reshuffle” his aviation assets.
“It is hard to say at this point how it all will be reshuffled,” the source said, citing that he is not authorized to comment to on the issues to media.
“In the west, the way Aerosvit handles its employees and passengers would get them into so much trouble, with lawsuits and the like, that they would not recover afterwards. But when trade unions are week and passengers reluctant to fight for their rights, the company just gets away with it,” the source added.
Aviation expert Yevhen Vinnikov says it is unlikely that Aerosvit will go bankrupt as current owners invest in the company, buying new aircrafts. However, he adds that the market might change as “there is apparently the idea of merging national carriers.”
While experts do not agree on what exactly will happen, they agree that the situation is a direct result of what they call “duopoly” of Ukraine’s aviation market.
“The situation amounts to a monopoly of two largest national carriers, Aerosvit and Ukraine International Airlines,” says Oleksandr Myronenko, an aviation expert and founder of the avianews.com website.
Apart from reportedly owning Aerosvit, Kolomoisky is reported to control smaller domestic carriers Donbasaero and Dniproavia. Through these airlines, he corners an estimated 48.5 percent of the market.
Insiders and reports suggest that Kolomoisky also controls another airline, Windrose. If so, he holds a commanding 60 percent share of the domestic market.
On international routes, Ukraine International Airlines controls 30 percent of the market and is run by a company called Capital Investment Project. The company had exclusive rights to fly to many European destinations, like Barcelona, Paris, Berlin.
Experts agree passengers will benefit only if Ukraine will sign the Open Sky agreement with European countries. It would let other companies into the market, bringing more competition.
Although Ukraine’s government continues years of negotiations to finalize the agreement, it does not seem enthusiastic to bring in more competition for domestic players.
Infrastructure minister Borys Kolesnikov has last year Ukraine would sign the deal “only after the EU will cancel its visa regime with Ukraine.” He has not elaborated on how the two separate issues could be related.
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected]
