Belavia (B2, Minsk National) owner, the Belarus government, says it has successfully resolved an impasse with the Ukrainian government concerning the allocation of flight frequencies on the Minsk-Kiev route.
“The issue has been settled. Belavia's director general informed me in the evening yesterday that a verbal agreement on the frequency of flights had been reached," The director general of the Belarus Ministry of Transport and Communications' Aviation Department, Vladimir Kostin, told the BelTA newswire. "We will offer two flights per day while the Ukrainian airlines will offer one flight."
The announcement comes after the State Aviation Administration of Ukraine (SAAU) granted Belavia temporary permission to operate its usual 14x weekly Minsk National-Kyiv Boryspil service through to April 14. Prior to the start of the IATA summer season, the SAAU only awarded Belavia half the 14x weekly slots it had requested leading to the Belarus carrier warning passengers it may have to cancel all services until the issue was resolved.
Kiev had justified the move on the grounds that Minsk had only granted Ukraine International Airlines (PS, Kyiv Boryspil) seven weekly flights for its own Kiev-Minsk service, set to launch later this month, in contravention of a Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA) signed between the two sides in 1995.
As such, the Ukrainian and Belarus authorities agreed to maintain the status quo until April 14 to allow for a settlement to be reached.
