Uzhgorod International Airport received its first flight on Friday in accordance with the intergovernmental agreement signed between Ukraine and Slovakia in September 2020.
According to the press service of the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, now air traffic control, as well as the use of airspace at a tactical level, will take place in a certain part of the airspace of Slovakia. Non-precision instrument approach procedures will be applied at the Uzhgorod aerodrome.
The ministry said that this agreement was necessary due to the fact that this airport is located in a mountainous area in such a way that the threshold of runway 10 is located a few hundred meters from the Ukrainian-Slovak border. Therefore, the use of the airspace of a neighboring country is a prerequisite for instrument landings at this airfield.
“From today, the possibilities of using the airfield for airlines in Uzhgorod have been expanded. This is the result of Ukraine’s long-term work at the international level, and we expect that it will have a positive effect on the development of air transportation in the region. We see that there is a demand for both international and domestic flights. For example, flights on the route Kyiv – Uzhgorod – Kyiv, restored this summer, almost always take place with full load of seats,” Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov said.
UkSATSE, in turn, said that Ukraine’s ability to manage air traffic in part of the airspace of an EU member state is proved by an updated certificate that the state-owned enterprise received from the EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) on August 31, 2021.
