KYIV. Dec 24 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Ukraine International Airlines (UIA, Kyiv) in 2015 will increase passenger transportation by 26% or 1 million people, to 4.8 million passengers, UIA President Yuriy Miroshnykov has said.
“The most pleasant is that this is more than in 2013 – we hit our record of 2013, the last pre-crisis year. In addition, we made this with less planes and employees,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
He said that the company expects to see profit under IFRS in 2015.
“All our partners – lessors, insurers, banks – demand these indicators from us. Under Ukrainian accounting standards the company will see loss. This is linked to large exchange rate fluctuations, especially in February 2015,” he said.
Commenting on the development in 2015, Miroshnykov said that the airline launched six international flights from Kyiv, including one long-haul Kyiv-Beijing flight, six regional international direct flights, mainly from Lviv and Odesa, two domestic Kyiv-Zaporizhia and Kyiv-Ivano-Frankivsk flights and the airline had experimented with domestic regional flights Lviv-Odesa and Kharkiv-Odesa.
Asked about the plans about passenger transportation in 2016, he said that the airline has the plans and the budget has been approved.
“We hope to exceed the five-million level for passenger flow and reach 5.5 million of passengers. This will be a rise of around 17% compared to 2015,” he said.
However, UIA plans to expand its fleet in 2016 to reach this goal for passenger transportation.
“We expect that six planes will arrive. They will be all Boeing 737-800NG aircraft, one new and five used… We will lose two planes by autumn [the leasing contract will expire]. The average age of UIA’s fleet will remain stable – around 11 years,” he said.
UIA was founded in 1992. It is the largest Ukrainian airline. The base airport is Boryspil airport. UIA’s fleet consists of 31 aircraft: 27 medium-haul and four long-haul aircraft.
