The Kyiv Court of Appeal has canceled a previous decision to suspend the license of Ukrainian low-cost airline SkyUp.
The court made its ruling on Sept. 25 and published the decision the same day.
In May 2019, a court in Baryshivka, a town of just under 11,000 people located roughly 70 kilometers from Kyiv, suspended SkyUp’s license to operate passenger flights, stating that the company allegedly provided customers with poor service, failed to adhere to safety norms and had many flight delays.
Read more: Fishy court ruling aims to shut down SkyUp Airlines
The strange decision sparked outrage from many in the aviation and business communities, who viewed it as a questionably legal attempt to shut down a Ukrainian business. Some alleged that the company’s competitors were behind the ruling.
Aleksandr Alba, the co-founder of SkyUp, considered it to be an attack on his family business.
Founded in 2016 by the Alba family, SkyUp is an airline specializing in low-cost and charter flights. It carries out international flights to some of the most popular vacation destinations for Ukrainians in Europe and the Middle East and a growing number of domestic flights to Ukraine’s biggest cities for low prices.
In the Baryshivka case, a woman named Oksana Pasenko filed suit against the company claiming she was dissatisfied with the service she received from SkyUp. However, it later turned out that she had not been a client of the company and had never even been on a plane before. Pasenko suggested her identity was stolen to file the case.
Now, four months after the initial decision, the ruling has been overturned.
“Today is a great day for all of us. We asserted our common right to fly. The notorious Baryshivka court decision was canceled!” Alba wrote in a Facebook post.
“We have been fighting for openness, the rule of law and fair competition for four months. And we have finally won,” Alba wrote.
