Low-cost airlines in Europe have started making plans to return to Ukraine
4 December 14:22
Ukraine’s skies have been closed to civil aviation since the beginning of the war, but amid negotiations for a peaceful settlement, European discount airlines such as Ryanair, Wizz Air, and EasyJet have begun preparing to resume operations.
Ryanair said it could resume flights within two weeks of any peace agreement. Wizz Air plans to deploy 15 planes to Ukraine within two years after the cessation of hostilities, and increase their number to 50 in seven years, the Financial Times reports, "Komersant Ukrainian".
“We have planned this, and once the airspace is open, we will resume our operations very quickly,” Jozsef Varadi, CEO of Wizz Air, which was the largest foreign airline in Ukraine before the war and the third largest in terms of total passenger traffic, told the newspaper.
Airlines foresee several main sources of demand. These include the return of Ukrainians who have moved to other countries, the arrival of reconstruction workers, and so-called “disaster tourism,” where travelers visit areas affected by disasters caused by human actions or nature.
“When the Berlin Wall came down, millions of people went to see it,” Varadi said.
Before the covid pandemic, in 2019, 15 million air passengers visited Ukraine. Of these, about 1.5 million were carried by Ryanair. Currently, the airline’s top managers have visited key Ukrainian airports and plan to increase traffic to 4 million passengers per year after the resumption of regular flights. CEO Eddie Wilson said:
“We will start selling tickets for flights within two weeks, it’s just a matter of when it’s safe to fly.
EasyJet had not operated flights to Ukraine before the war, but is currently exploring the possibility of opening routes.
As CEO Kenton Jarvis told the FT, Ukraine promises to be “Europe’s biggest construction project,” and people “will want to go home when it’s safe to go home.”
