The president of Ukraine International Airlines (UIA), Yurii Miroshnikov, has said that the Minsk (Belarus), Riga (Latvia), and Chisinau (Moldova) airports could serve as transit airports for flights between Ukraine and Russia after direct flights between the two countries are cancelled, the CFTS correspondent reports.
According to Miroshnikov, the cost of transportation between Russia and Ukraine will rise as a result of the "air conflict" between the two countries.
"UIA is not going to raise transport prices just to spite someone. The increase will happen by itself if there is no direct connection and it becomes necessary to use transit routes. The market and operational circumstances will probably result in higher prices, but will not specially raise prices," Miroshnikov said at a press conference in Kiev on Friday, 2 October.
As reported, UIA recently said that its losses from a ban on flights to Russia would amount to about USD 10 million per year. The airline transported an average of about 350,000 passengers on flights to and from Russia per year.
On 16 September, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a decree introducing the National Security and Defense Council’s decision of 2 September 2015 that imposed sanctions on Russian airlines. More than twenty Russian air carriers are affected by these sanctions.
On 29 September, it emerged that Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency decided to ban Ukrainian airlines from using Russian airspace from 25 October.
