Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) will increase transportation of passengers by 1 million or 26% to 4.8 million in 2015, compared with 2014. The airline company’s President Yurii Miroshnikov announced this in an interview with the Interfax Ukraine news agency.

"The most pleasant thing is that this is more than [the number of passengers that the airline transported] in 2013 - we have exceeded the record that we set in 2013, the last pre-crisis year. In addition, we did it with fewer aircraft and personnel," he said.

According to the president of the company, management accounting based on international standards (the IFRS or International Financial Reporting Standards) predicts that the company will make a profit at the end of the year. "These figures are demanded from us by all our partners - lessors, insurers, banks... At the same time, the result based Ukrainian accounting standards will be negative. This is due to significant exchange-rate fluctuations, which were most sensitive in February 2015," Miroshnikov said.

Speaking of development in 2015, the president of UIA noted that the company has opened six international routes from Kyiv, including a long-distance Kyiv–Beijing route, six regional international direct routes (mostly from Lviv and Odesa), and two domestic flights (Kyiv–Zaporizhia and Kyiv–Ivano-Frankivsk), and "experimented" with domestic regional flights (Lviv–Odessa and Kharkiv–Odesa).

Asked about plans for passenger transportation in 2016, Miroshnikov said, "There is a plan, and a budget has been approved. We expect to exceed the 5-million milestone in terms of passenger transportation and reach 5.5 million passengers, which will be about 17% growth compared to 2015."

To achieve such growth, UIA expects to increase its aircraft fleet in 2016. "We can no longer achieve further growth without expansion of the fleet. We expect arrival of six aircraft and they will all be Boeing 737-800NG, one of them new from the factory and five not new, but quite young. Two aircraft of the classic series will leave towards the autumn (the leasing agreement will expire). Therefore, the average age of UIA’s fleet will remain stable at 11 years," the UIA president said.

UIA is the largest airline in Ukraine. It is based at the Boryspil airport in Kyiv. The airline has a fleet of 31 aircraft: 27 medium- range and four long-range. One of the ultimate beneficiary owners of the airline is businessman Ihor Kolomoiskyi.