Ukraine International airlines (UIA) carried 7,963,600 passengers in 2019, which is 0.6% fewer passengers compared with 2018.
This is stated in data published by Avianews, the CFTS portal reports.
The reduction occurred against the backdrop of a change in the airline’s flight program in the fall of 2019 with the aim of returning the airline to profit.
UIA recorded an increase in passenger transport volumes on domestic, long-haul, and charter flights and a slight reduction on medium-haul international flights in 2019.
The airline carried 1,026,900 passengers on charter flights (a 15.4% increase), 662,700 on long-haul flights (9.7% increase), 960,400 on domestic flights (2.3% increase), and 5,313,600 on international medium-haul flights (4.7% reduction) in 2019.
The airline performed a total number of 58,600 flights in 2019, which is 4.6% fewer than the number it performed in 2018. The average seat occupancy rate improved by 1.3 percentage points to 81.8%. The maximum seat occupancy rate of 92.1% was recorded on charter flights, followed by 80.8% on medium-haul international flights, 79.6% on long-haul flights, and 79.1% on domestic flights.
Transit passengers accounted for 50.5% of the airline’s total passenger volume in in 2019, compared with 52.6% in 2018.
As the CFTS portal reported, UIA plans to reduce its fleet to 34 aircraft in 2020. This is related to the planned withdrawal of some aircraft from service at the end of 2019 as part of the optimization of the airline’s flight program, as well as to the loss of a Boeing 737-800 UR-PSR airliner in Iran on January 08, 2020. The airline plans to increase its fleet again after closing unprofitable routes and optimizing its network of routes.
