Belavia (B2, Minsk National) is considering acquiring Let 410s ahead of plans to reintroduce scheduled domestic flights. According to Belarus newswire BeIta, Minister of Transport and Communications, Anatoly Sivak, said his ministry was also looking at developing Minsk into a domestic hub.
"There are people in Gomel, Vitebsk, Grodno and Brest who use air transport, especially when flying abroad - for example to London, Berlin and so on. Opening such flights, we consider the Minsk airport a transit one," he said.
While regular year-round domestic flights were discontinued at the start of 2011 owing to poor uptake, Belavia continues to operate summer charter flights with Minsk National to Gomel and onwards to Kaliningrad having recently resumed.
Sivak has proposed offsetting the cost of domestic flights against those to the European Union in effect subsidizing them and making them more accessible to the general public.
The Belarus national carrier is in the process of modernizing and expanding its fleet with an order for three B737-800s having recently been placed. In addition, the government of strongman Alexander Lukashenko has also approached Boeing (BOE, Washington National) with a view to it establishing an MRO facility at the Minsk Aircraft Repair Plant. Though it has traditionally focussed on maintaining Yakovlev Aircraft Corporation (YAK, Moscow Sheremetyevo) and Tupolev Design Bureau (Zhukovsky) aircraft, Minsk has now allocated BYR30billion (USD2.93million) to the facility's upgrade and refurbishment.
“Our task is to make rapid progress on the project. When it is complete, negotiations with potential investors will gain momentum. Now the talks are pretty sluggish,” the minister said.
The Minister said that once the modernization works have been completed, the facility will be able to handle Airbus (AIB, Toulouse Blagnac), Boeing, and Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) aircraft. It will also produce component parts for military and civil aircraft.
