ARMENIAN PASSENGERS WILL HAVE TO BUY EXPENSIVE AIR TICKETS THIS SUMMER, EXPERT SAYS
YEREVAN, May 7. /ARKA/. Armenian passengers may find themselves having
difficulty buying air tickets as overseas air carriers will be,
no doubt, selling their tickets at high prices, deputy head of the
Public Council commission on air transportation Izabella Muradyan
said in her interview to ARKA.
“The question is how high the ticket prices will go and whether our
leadership is conscious of the fact we will be losing the market
and leverage over price formation if we do not have a national air
carrier”, she said.
Armavia national air company halted its operations and started a
bankruptcy procedure as from the beginning of April.
Officials say ticket prices will not rise, but foreign air companies
have already stopped selling “cheap class” tickets, Muradyan said.
This means ticket prices became much more expensive now, she added.
Muradyan also pointed out that LOT – Polish Airlines and Air Baltic
left the Armenian market in 2012 probably due to financial problems.
British airways that departed from the market in the same 2012 kept
saying they were not interested in the Armenian market, she said.
Earlier, deputy head of Armenian tour operators union Yeghishe
Tanashyan said air companies gave up flying to Armenia due to high
tariffs used by Zvartnots airport and overloaded air space. Tickets
from Armenia to Eastern European countries have grown up by 20-25%
over the last years, he said.
According to an earlier report, the government was negotiating with
air company over reducing air ticket prices. -0–