Ryanair’s battle in Ukraine

RYANAIR has cancelled planned routes to Ukraine and accused Kiev airport of failing to honour its commitments.

The low-cost Irish airline said it had been forced to abandon the expansion after the airport failed to honour a ‘growth agreement’.

Ryanair was due to launch routes to Kiev from London Stansted, Manchester, Eindhoven in the Netherlands and Swedish capital Stockholm in October, but said Kiev airport had ‘chosen to protect high-fare airlines’. The airline did not specify what the airport had done, instead it said it had been forced to cancel four Kiev routes and seven to Lviv resulting in the loss of over 500,000 passengers and 400 jobs.

Customers who booked flights to and from Ukraine would be contacted and refunded.

Ryanair said it will ‘transfer this capacity to competing markets, such as Germany, Israel and Poland instead’.