According to preliminary results, Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) carried 1.787 million passengers from January to December 2020, which is four times less than the result for 2019 (about 8 million passengers).
The press service of the company reported that during the specified period, UIA operated about 17,000 regular and code-share flights, which is 72% less compared to the same indicator for 2019. The percentage of transit passengers amounted to 43% of the total traffic (486,000 passengers, 86% less).
The company also noted that in 2020 it transported more than 4,800 tonnes of cargo (15,000 tonnes in 2019) and 1,350 tonnes of mail (4,400 tonnes in 2019).
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and government decisions to ban flights, the airline was forced to cancel thousands of flights and, as a result, the airline received thousands of requests for refunds. In the period from April to November 2020, some 85,861 passenger requests and returns in the amount of almost $ 22 million were processed. By this time, about 56,000 unprocessed applications for refunds were recorded. UIA employees carefully record each appeal and process them in turn,” UIA added.
The airline noted that during the lockdown, UIA optimized its work: it reduced its expenditures by three times, optimized its fleet and proportionally cut its staff by about 1,000 people.
