Turkish Airlines, Belavia, LOT, Qatar Airways, Lufthansa, and Wizz Air perform more transit flights through Ukrainian airspace than other foreign airlines.
The head of the Ukrainian State Air Traffic Services Enterprise (UkSATSE), Andrii Yarmak, announced this in an interview with the CFTS portal.
According to him, there was a drop in transit air traffic in Ukraine’s airspace after 2013. “If 65% of all flights were transit after 2013, then the share of transit flights is just over 40% today. That is, we have reoriented from transit flows to take-off and landing flows in Ukraine. The main reason is the closure of part of the airspace over the southern part of the country, over the temporarily occupied Crimea, including the territorial waters, as well as the closure of the environmental protection zone, including the buffer zone," said Yarmak.
“The good news is that the flight dynamics began recovering in 2017. The annual increase in volumes is about 20%,” he said.
As reported, UkSATSE provided air navigation services to 300,853 flights operated by foreign and Ukrainian airlines in 2018, which is 18.5% more compared with 2017. In particular, UkSATSE handled 106,654 flights operated by domestic airlines in 2018, which is 9.7% more compared with 2017. The number of foreign airline flights handled by UkSATSE also increased by 23.9% to 194,199.
UkSATSE services by flight type also increased: transit flights by 23% to 125,145 international flights (with departure/landing) by 16.2% to 146,115, and domestic flights by 11.8%to 29,593.
