Ukraine will not sign an “open sky” deal with the European Union until Ukrainians are granted visa-free travel to EU bloc countries, Deputy Prime Minister Borys Kolesnikov said on March 11.
The deal, which would cause flight prices both domestically and internationally to drop as more routes and competition open up, had been pushed for by experts and foreign airlines.
But “signing the deal without prior visa cancellation for Ukrainians will cause Europeans to fly to Ukraine freely while it will remain hard to fly to Europe for Ukrainians,” said Kolesnikov.
“Our airways are not ready for competition like that,” he added while noting that the government had almost reached an open sky deal with Russia and Israel, countries where Ukrainians can travel without visas.
With Ukrainian airlines Aerosvit and Ukraine International Airlines as the dominant Ukrainian airlines flying to foreign destinations and Donbasaero, Dniproavia and Windrose focused mostly on domestic routes, foreign passenger airlines complain that it is hard to get access to routes in Ukraine.
In an earlier interview with the Kyiv Post, John Stephenson, vice president of Wizz Air, the first low-cost airline on the Ukrainian market, said that “getting access to routes is the biggest issue in Ukraine.”
Wizz Air originally launched flights to Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv, but then cancelled them, leaving only Kyiv – Simferopil route open. Wizz Air continues, however, with its regular flights between Ukraine and foreign destinations. But it stands largely alone as the only major low-cost airline from abroad operating in Ukraine.
Expansion of foreign companies, including low-cost carriers, is also hampered by Ukrainian bureaucracy and government policy, where getting operating permission usually takes more than one year.
Kyiv Post staff writer Svitlana Tuchynska can be reached at [email protected].
