Page 57 - UKRRptDec21

9.1.3 Transport sector news
● Planes
The volume of aircraft sales to 2030 will exceed UAH300bn, said the Prime Minister, Denys Shmygal. According to Shmygal, aircraft construction can become one of the drivers of industrial production. Due to the development strategy of the aviation industry, the volume of aircraft sales in Ukraine in the period up to 2030 is estimated at over UAH300bn ($11.1bn). Ukraine has already invested UAH3.4bn ($126mn) in aviation infrastructure.
The share of low-cost carriers using Boryspil airport has reached 40%.
This includes the traffic of hybrid airlines and low-cost carriers which now account for 40% of the total passenger traffic at Boryspil Airport on international scheduled flights in 2021. In 2017, their share was 3%, and in pre-crisis 2019, 17%. According to the General Director of Boryspil Airport, Alexey Dubrevsky, the change is due to structural changes in the entire market, as passengers have become more likely to fly low-cost carriers that operate direct flights, rather than the classic airlines that provide transfers at the base airport, reported avianews.
Kyiv Boryspil airport handled 8 million passengers through October – 61% of the level for the first 10 months of 2019. In September and October, Ukraine’s business airport returned to handling 1 million passengers a month. Reflecting a down shifting in travel patterns, 62% of passengers in October were flying charters.
France’s Airbus will be the main supplier of jets to Ukrainian National Airlines, the new state airline that is to take flight next year. With President Zelenskiy watching, a memorandum of cooperation was signed yesterday at Boryspil Airport by Infrastructure Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov and Airbus regional vice president Kimon Sotiropoulos. The Airbus executives said: “We see that in Ukraine, a country that has a huge potential for tourism, for business and any new opportunities, there is great potential for creating a new carrier.”
Within five years, the new national airline will fly to 36 destinations with a fleet of up to 22 jets, Patrice Fazier, an executive with French consulting company Aerogestion, told the government-sponsored transportation conference. The memorandum calls for buying or leasing: six small narrow-body aircraft, of the Airbus A220 type; 12 medium narrow-body aircraft, of the A320/A321 type, and four wide-body aircraft, of the A330/A350 type. The presence at the signing ceremony of Etienne de Poncins, France’s ambassador to Ukraine, signaled that French government financing is likely.
With Ryanair, Wizz Air, Bees and UIA already flying to dozens of EU cities, Zelenskiy said that having a national, state-owned airline is a matter of prestige. “It is not only a question of increasing profits and passenger traffic,” he told the “Big Construction: Aviation and Tourism” conference organized by his office. “But also a question of status, a question of image, a question of prestige of our state. Our national air carrier is an independent air carrier from
57 UKRAINE Country Report December 2021 www.intellinews.com