World gov’ts devise airline assistance plans 14MAY

The Government of Cyprus will subsidise airlines over the next six months if they have load factors of 40-70%, to stabilise the sector in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Transport minister Yiannis Karousos on June 10 said the Cypriot council of ministers had approved the incentive scheme to address the consequences of COVID-19 on the country’s air connectivity and aims at immediately re-establishing international passenger traffic.

The scheme will be in place over the next six months and have a budget of EUR6.3 million euros (USD7.15 million). It will be open to all airlines and will be based on aircraft occupancy and will only be granted if an airline can fill at least 40% of the aircraft’s capacity.

“For this reason, an incentive will be paid to the airline companies for a capacity of 41% to 70%, assuming that if the airline company exceeds 70% of aircraft capacity, it will have attained normal market conditions,” Karousos said.

“We anticipate that passenger traffic will reach 37,000 passengers in June, 196,000 in July, 460,000 in August, 634,000...

Cyprus Airways (CY, Larnaca) is planning to gradually resume services from Cyprus, initially focusing on serving destinations in Greece.

The Cypriot carrier, whose co-parent is Russia's S7 Group, has announced on its website that starting on June 9, it will resume its services between Larnaca and Athens Int'l. They will initially operate 5x weekly, growing to daily as of June 22.

Starting in July, the airline plans to resume flights from Larnaca to Thessaloniki, Heraklion, Rhodes, Skiathos, Zurich, Geneva, and Tel Aviv Ben Gurion.

The decision follows the planned reopening of Larnaca and Paphos airports on June 9.

The carrier operates two A319-100s, the ch-aviation fleets advanced module shows. It said that flights will operate in the special sanitary regime, including retaining empty middle seats "where possible".