AirBaltic has a ready plan to return to Ukraine

The Latvian airline AirBaltic has developed a plan to resume flights to Ukraine and will use it as soon as the airspace is opened here.

Chief Executive Officer Martin Gauss declared this in an interview with Bloomberg .

AirBaltic plans to transfer capacity from other destinations to Ukraine when the conditions are safe for this. Also, the airline wants to leave some planes in Ukraine for the night, i.e. make a night stop.

“We can fly tonight if itʼs safe. I would even fly there empty, if it is clear that we can fly back and tickets will be sold," Gauss emphasized.

Before the full-scale war, the Latvian airline had a strong market in Ukraine and operated flights from Kyiv, Lviv and Odesa. The opening of Ukrainian airspace is important for the company because, according to Gauss, there is a high demand for travel in Ukraine and the possibility of flying a more direct route from Latvia to, for example, Dubai or Greece.

• The sky over Ukraine has been closed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia. During the almost three years of the war, there were periodic announcements about plans to open a part of the sky or launch limited air services, for example from Kyiv to Lviv. Practical solutions have not yet been announced. However, Ukraine is in formal talks with US and European safety regulators to resume air travel.
• Airlines are ready to fly to Ukraine after the war. Ryanair even announced a return plan, which envisages launching 75 air routes from Europe to Ukraine in the first 8 weeks after the end of the war.

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