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Belavia will not fly planes to Crimea's Simferopol this year

Belavia will not fly planes to Crimea's Simferopol this year, Anatol Husaraw, director general of Belarus` national airline told reporters in Minsk on Friday.

"Everybody knows what is going on there," Mr. Husaraw said. "We have the opportunity to operate flights, including to Simferopol, but this destination was not as popular this February, March and early April as the previous years. …There was an outflow of passengers even among those who had booked or bought tickets to this destination. This means that people returned their tickets. So, unfortunately, we have decided not to operate flights to Simferopol this year."

When asked by a BelaPAN correspondent whether the decision might be reversed in the summer months, Mr. Husaraw replied in the negative.

"This is the final decision," he said. "We have already redirected planes to other destinations, including for charter flights."

On April 3, Belavia Deputy Director General Ihar Charhinets told BelaPAN that the airline had had to suspend flights to Crimea`s Simferopol because of low passenger loads.

According to Mr. Charhinets, Belavia`s decision to suspend its flights to Simferopol was not influenced by the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol)`s ban on flights to Crimea`s Simferopol and Sevastopol. "We made this decision a little earlier," he said.

Although Minsk-Simferopol flights were popular in recent years, they are not popular this year, Mr. Charhinets said.

"The fact is that those flights were operated only three months a year, from the beginning of June to the end of August," Mr. Charhinets said. "If the flight has not been sold out now, when it will be sold out? There are some bookings, but there are very few of them compared with the same period, for example, last year and the year before. Sales of tickets have decreased several times. About 100 people have booked one-way tickets. There were much more bookings in previous years."