Belaeronavigatsia, Minsk Airport, Belavia to suffer losses due to air travel sanctions - CASE Belarus

<p> MINSK, Jun 17 - PrimePress. For Belarus, Western sanctions in the airline industry will result in lost revenues for the air navigation company Belaeronavigatsia, Minsk National Airport and the state-owned air carrier Belavia, reckons Dmitry Babitsky, an expert of the Centre for Social and Economic Research at CASE Belarus. </p> <p>   </p> <p> The expert shared his point of view on June 16 during the presentation of CASE Belarus survey “What can Belarus’ transport industry lose because of the sanctions?” </p> <p>   </p> <p> The CASE Belarus representative accentuates the point that the sanctions imposed against the airline industry have affected flights fr om Belarus, as well as to Belarus, as well as transit flights. Accordingly, there are several channels through which Belarus is losing potential revenue. </p> <p>   </p> <p> One of them is the decrease in revenues from the fees payable for aircraft flying in Belarus air space and the volume of fees collected by airports. For instance, according to the available data, the revenues of the state enterprise Belaeronavigatsia for the transit of planes amount to $50-60 million a year. If the EU countries introduce a ban not only on flights of their aircraft over the territory of Belarus, but refuse to allow anyone who flies over the territory of Belarus to enter their airspace at all, these revenues would more than halve (only fees for flights to/from Belarus by Russian companies and some other countries would remain). </p> <p>   </p> <p> Due to the reduced number of flights, airport charges will be reduced. Belarus played an important role as a transit hub for traffic to/from Russia for countries with which it has no air links (Georgia and Ukraine). Flights were operated not only by Belavia, but also by Ukrainian and Russian companies, via Minsk National Airport. Babitsky noted that there is no publicly available data on the revenues of Minsk National Airport, but given that it passed through more than 5 million passengers in 2019, it can be assumed that the total amount of fees is in the range from $50 million to $100 million. Part of the airport fees will remain, as flights in the direction from Belarus to Russia, Kazakhstan, etc. will remain, but the airport will lose transit passengers and fees from them. </p> <p>   </p> <p> Also, the income of the air carrier itself, Belavia Airlines, will decrease. Overall, in terms of air transportation, Belarus' exports in 2019 amounted to $500 million, while in 2020 they were less than $200 million, part of which is Belavia’s revenues. After Belavia lost its western flight destinations, it will not reach the pre-crisis level of revenues; the company will have significant problems with revenue collection. The drop in revenue could run into hundreds of millions of dollars, the expert said. </p> <p>   </p> <p> On June 4, the European Union (EU) officially banned all Belarusian air carriers to use its airspace and airports. The ban does not apply to humanitarian flights, as well as emergency landings and emergency overflights. As a result, the geography of Belavia flights reduced to nine countries, the company said it could not perform flights to 20 countries and Kaliningrad (Russia), wh ere it used to fly. End </p>

2021-06-18

Primepress