Ukraine’s national airline wants to ‘shrink to succeed’

Plane Talk: Kiev-based flag carrier cutting routes ‘due to negative profitability’

Ukraine International is the flagship airline of Ukraine (Getty)

“Flight programme is being axed due to the need to optimise the airline’s costs and bring it back to the profit zone.”

The announcement from Ukraine International Airlines (UIA) looked dramatic: was it planning to axe its entire schedule?

In fact, the agricultural implement is being deployed to trim routes and introducing a bizarre “shift system” for its remaining flights to and from Kiev’s Borispol airport.

I am fond of UIA for more than just its market-beating fares. The carrier provides the pre-flight entertainment of seeing ground staff frisking each other on the apron at Kiev; cabin crew who bid passengers “Goodbye, and all the best”; and the cheapest in-flight beer on the planet. (Just €2 a can last time I had one. Well, at that price, two.)

But UIA, like Qatar Airways, finds its freedom to fly geopolitically constrained.

Qatari planes must avoid the airspace of some neighbours in the Gulf. UIA is banned from flying over the world’s biggest country, Russia. That cramps its style, especially when the carrier is also excluded from Crimea, the Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia.

When I flew from Kiev to the Kazakh capital, Almaty, the plane spent the first hour heading due south to the Black Sea before it could begin the eastbound flight.

But while Qatar Airways is backed by trillions of dollars of hydrocarbon wealth, UIA is not. So its cunning new plan is to keep things simple: go west during the day and east at night.

All UIA flights to western Europe will depart from Kiev between 9.30 and 10.30am, and return between 5.30 and 6.30pm. “Unnecessary duplication” (ie the choice of two different flights a day) to Brussels, Copenhagen, Paris and Rome will end.

Going south and east to Egypt, Turkey, Dubai and beyond, planes will leave between 8 and 9pm, and come home between 7.30 and 8.45am. The only exceptions: Gatwick, Istanbul, Tbilisi and Tel Aviv, which will operate several times daily. But it’s do pobachennya to Almaty, Amman, Beijing, Minsk, and Riga, which are all being axed “due to negative profitability”.

That unfortunate financial complaint has seen off other eastern European flag carriers. Malev of Hungary failed in 2012, and a month ago Slovenia’s Adria Airways went west – or rather, stopped going west, north, east and south.

“Shrink to succeed” is not a proven business strategy in aviation. Flybe is cutting one-seventh of flights this winter, but that is to get it into shape for the new owners and a fresh brand, Virgin Connect. Tens of millions of pounds have been pumped in to keep the UK’s biggest regional airline flying.

Norwegian, meanwhile, is “returning to profitability through a series of measures, including an optimised route and base portfolio and an extensive cost-reduction programme”. That’ll be flying less, then.

As UIA joins the shrinkers, Ryanair and Wizz Air are steadily encroaching on its territory. Ryanair started flying to Ukraine only 13 months ago, and already has 5 per cent of the international market.

Wizz Air carries one in nine airline passengers in and out of Ukraine, and has the advantage for Kiev-bound travellers of serving the absurdly central Zhulyany airport – walking distance from Independence Square at the heart of the capital.

Ukraine is a splendid destination, from the handsome and historic capital, Kiev, to the blessed Black Sea jewel, Odessa.

It is unexpectedly benefiting from “Chernobyl tourism”, with trips to the scene of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in strong demand. For the nation to benefit from a broader spectrum of traveller, it needs flourishing air links. But sadly I am not sure that UIA will be part of the long-term solution.