A new low-cost airline may be registered in Ukraine in autumn 2017. The low-cost airline will focus on operating domestic flights.
Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelian announced this in an interview.
"Creation of a new airline in the low-cost segment will allow us to change the situation (regarding monopolization by a single domestic air carrier). I hope we will register it in the autumn. It will be private investment: 51% by Ukraine, 49% by foreigners. The structure has to be like this because domestic flights can be performed only with Ukrainian registration," the minister said.
Omelian already announced previously that work on creation of this airline was underway and suggested that a new low-cost airline could start operating flights in 2017. "Negotiations are proceeding successfully. I hope that we have every chance for the company to be legally registered already this year and possibly begin flights within Ukraine and beyond,” Omelian said in late May. At that time, he expressed the hope that the airline’s flights within Ukraine would cost UAH 500-1,000 hryvnia.
A report published in early June claimed that Pegasus Airlines, a Turkish low-cost airline, had applied to the Ukrainian State Aviation Service for registration as a Ukrainian airline. However, the Ukrainian Ministry of Infrastructure immediately denied this report.
Reports of Pegasus Airlines possibly opening a subsidiary in Ukraine first emerged in late January, when Omelian said at a meeting with business representatives at the European Business Association that the Ministry of Infrastructure was working with a Turkish airline that wanted to open a subsidiary in Ukraine for operating domestic flights.
According to avianews.com, Omelian told a press conference in Kyiv on July 14 that it was about emergence of a subsidiary of foreign carrier in Ukraine.
