airBaltic on a working visit to Boryspil Airport: we are optimistic about the plans to resume flights to Ukraine

26 March 2024

On 25 March 2024, a delegation from airBaltic, the Latvian national airline, consisting of Mr. Martin Gauss, CEO and President of airBaltic, Mr. Mantas Vrubliauskas, Vice President for Network Development and Ms. Maria Radchenko, Head of Representative office in Ukraine, paid a working visit to Boryspil International Airport. Mr. Kristaps Purmalis, the Second Secretary for Economic Affairs of the Embassy of the Republic of Latvia in Ukraine, also joined the delegation.

During the visit to Boryspil Airport, the airBaltic delegation together with the airport management conducted a thorough inspection of the airport’s infrastructure, equipment and readiness to resume aviation activities once an acceptable level of flight safety is ensured. As a reminder, Boryspil Airport is a long-term and reliable partner of the Latvian airline: in 2019-2021, airBaltic operated 3,644 international flights from Boryspil Airport, and carried 285.6 thousand passengers, 1,374.2 tons of cargo and mail in both directions. The share of Boryspil Airport in the total passenger traffic of airBaltic in the Ukrainian air transport market reached 78% in 2019, 100% in 2020, and 80% in 2021. “An enormous part of the work we do every day, is cooperation with our key partners – airlines that flew to us historically and which are looking to restart flights in the future. The visit to our airport by the top management of airBaltic, the Latvian national airline, is an essential phase in the implementation of the process of future flight resumption, along with building a reliable architecture for flight safety and passenger security, maintaining airport infrastructure and retention of highly qualified personnel, and maintaining the airport’s certified activities,” said Oleksiy Dubrevskyy, Boryspil Airport CEO.

Within the framework of the visit, the parties discussed options and mechanisms for future cooperation, additional security measures and the necessary prerequisites for airBaltic to resume flights to Ukraine. During the visit, Martin Gauss, CEO and President of airBaltic, said: “We are eager to take an active part in the resumption of air traffic to Ukraine, as we understand that aviation and airports are a crucial engine for the recovery of the Ukrainian economy. In the harshest conditions of the war in Ukraine, we have witnessed the professionalism of the airport teams, that are ready to resume flights as soon as it is safe to do so, keeping in mind that the safety of our employees, passengers, aircraft and flights is our top priority.”airBaltic has announced that it is ready to resume flights as soon as Ukraine’s airspace is reopened and declared safe, and is planning to launch flights to Kyiv, Lviv, following by flights to Odesa, connecting these cities with the Baltic capitals and major European cities via Riga. Thus, the Latvian airline plans to reintegrate Ukrainian destinations into its route network. After all, airBaltic operates more than 130 routes from Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius and Tampere, offering connectivity to a large number of destinations in the airline’s network in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the Caucasus.