The Nova Poshta postal company has launched its own airline named Supernova Airlines.
The company announced this in a statement, the CFTS portal reports.
The airline will have its own aircraft fleet and it will be under the control of the Nova Poshta Global company.
The airline will operate flights from the Boryspil and Lviv international airports. It will deliver international cargo.
"We work with partner airlines to transport our customers’ parcels and we are very grateful to them for their fruitful cooperation. However, our transport volumes are constantly increasing and we need to explore new horizons. The decision to launch our own airline was dictated by the fact that we want to continue to guarantee our customers high quality, speed, and predictability of delivery," Nova Poshta Global’s CEO Yurii Benevytskyi said.
The company has not yet disclosed the aircraft and routes it plans to use and when flights will begin.
The CFTS portal has established that the airline was registered as a legal entity only two weeks ago. Nova Poshta expects the airline to undergo all the necessary procedures and receive a flight permit within six months. Regarding the airline’s aircraft fleet, Nova Poshta told the CFTS portal that the airline would begin operations with two airplanes, but the company has not disclosed the type of aircraft. According to the company, the airline will lease the aircraft. It is not yet known where the future airline will be based.
As reported earlier, Nova Poshta’s co-founder Volodymyr Popereshniuk announced back in 2017 that the company intended to create its own aircraft fleet soon. “We planned to have some kind of Nova Poshta aircraft in 2018. Maybe two or three years will be needed for the company to start using its own aircraft to deliver parcels directly from the United States and China. This is our goal, and then we will be able to minimize periods and control costs and quality," Popereshniuk said.
The second co-founder of the company, Viacheslav Klymov, said in an interview with the CFTS portal in April 2018, "We will switch to our own aircraft as soon as there is an economic benefit."
As the CFTS portal also reported, Nova Poshta tested parcel delivery with an unmanned aerial vehicle in summer this year, when it flew a test parcel at an altitude of 300 meters. A Discovery unmanned aerial vehicle from the Ukrainian-based Aerodron company was used for the test delivery. The unmanned aerial vehicle departed from the Chaika airfield (Kyiv region) at 07:00 and arrived at the Korotych airfield at 12:00. Nova Poshta announced at the time that it planned the commercial launch of this service for 2022.
