Ukraine is working with Israeli experts on the experience of civil aviation flights in the face of possible attacks by drones, missiles, etc., and of the two plans that are being considered for the restoration of flights from Ukraine, the end of 2023 looks the most likely.
This was announced by the CEO of the low-cost airline Ryanair, Michael O’Leary, in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine .
“We are considering two plans: one when the war ends and everything opens in one or two days. And the second, the most likely, according to which we can plan a small number of flights already at the end of this year,” O’Leary said.
He said that Ukraine is working in this direction with experts from Israel and their experience in organizing flight safety.
“Can we convince the European security authorities and the Ukrainian authorities that the flights will be safe, that they can protect the aircraft from drones, missiles and the like, as is happening in Israel? The Ukrainian authorities are working with the right people to try to reopen the airspace,” O’Leary said.
According to him, today it looks safe to launch a limited number of flights to Kyiv and Lviv. In addition, according to the head of Ryanair, it will soon be safe to launch flights from Odessa.
“Two airports are intact and ready to start working tomorrow. They are in Kyiv and Lvov. We think that the airport in Odessa will also be available soon enough,” O’Leary said.
Regarding where flights from Ukraine will be directed, according to the CEO of Ryanair, the main cities will obviously be Warsaw, Krakow, Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Rome, London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris.
“Since we have planes based in these cities, we can simply deploy these planes to serve Kiev and Lvov. This will happen, I think, within about two to six weeks (after the restoration of the flight permit – ed.),” O’Leary said.
“It will be about 20 or 25 European cities on flights from Kyiv, about 10 from Lviv, and the next 5 cities from Odessa,” he added.
O’Leary also said that the airline is ready to have 10 aircraft in Kyiv, about five aircraft in Lvov, and possibly one or two aircraft in Odessa. And double their number over the next 2-4 years as traffic increases.
Source : EPRAVDA