Ryanair, the largest low-cost airline in Europe, is eyeing the Ukrainian market and, in particular, it is already holding talks with Lviv. The airline’s Commercial Director David O'Brien announced this in an interview with forbes.net.ua.
"We are in dialogue with people from Lviv, but I do not think we will discuss flights to Odesa. Currently, Ukraine can only be considered as a supplement to our main markets," O'Brien said.
According to him, such markets are Italy, Spain, Britain, Ireland, and Germany, to which numerous popular destinations are much closer than Ukraine.
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"Simply put, our business model is such that every additional flight increases our costs per passenger, and we expect a return on the investment. In Ukraine, of course, there is currently demand for flights to many countries. But these are mostly flights to the East and the North, where Ryanair has no legal rights to fly, and it is even physically unable to perform such flights," he said.
In August 2015, Ryanair’s Director of Communications Robin Kiely told the CFTS portal that the Irish low-cost airline’s decision on entering the Ukrainian market would be dependent on Ukraine signing an “Open Skies” agreement with the European Union.
Ryanair carried 101.4 million passengers in 2015, becoming the first airline in the world to exceed 100 million international passengers per year.
