The State Aviation Service’s commission on assignment of air routes approved assignment of international routes to the airlines Atlasjet Ukraine and Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) at a meeting on Tuesday, the Interfax Ukraine news agency reports.

Atlasjet Ukraine was assigned the routes Moscow-Lvov, Lvov-Madrid, Odessa-Moscow, Kherson-Istanbul, Zaporozhye-Istanbul, and Kiev-Kutaisi.

Asked when Atlasjet Ukraine will be able to start flights on the assigned routes, the airline’s head Serhii Pidhorodetskyi said he could not specify a date and told journalists that the company would wait for the decisions of the next meeting of the committee.

He added that the launch of Kiev-Lvov flights, which is scheduled for June 18, was likely to be postponed for some time.

In addition, the commission decided to assign the routes Kiev-Kutaisi, Odessa-Vilnius, Odessa-St. Petersburg, Odessa-Moscow, Lvov-Madrid, Vinnitsa-Gdansk, Vinnitsa-Berlin, and Kharkov-Warsaw to UIA. It also assigned the domestic routes Kharkov-Odessa and Lvov-Odessa to the airline.

The UM Air airline’s Chairman Rodrigue Merhej asked the commission to postpone consideration of UIA’s application for the Kiev-Amman route because his airline also performs corresponding flights. In addition, he once again declared UIA’s flights on the Kiev-Tehran route illegal because, according to him, only one carrier – which is UM Air – should operate on this route in accordance with the relevant intergovernmental agreement.

The State Aviation Service’s head Denys Antoniuk told journalists that he would sign the order on assignment of these routes on Tuesday if the protocol of the commission’s meeting were ready.

In total, Atlasjet Ukraine applied for about 30 routes and UIA for 35 at the commission’s meeting on Tuesday. However, according to the commission’s head Mykola Melnychen was its first meeting in a long time. In connection with this, it was decided to postpone consideration of assignment of a number of routes because other air carriers operating on these routes were not informed.

As a result, the commission decided to consider all the remaining applications at its next meeting, which is scheduled for June 26.