UIA bucks the international trend and ends 2008 with a profit

20.01.2009

Flying in the face of world airline industry trends of marked reductions in all aspects of air travel Ukraine International Airlines has met and exceeded its projected targets for 2008 and ended the year with the 9th straight year of profit in a row Despite the international airline industry down turn 2008 UIA:

  • operated 17,544 flights, an increase of  6.5% over 2007
  • carried 1,680,000 passengers, an increase of 16.5% over 2007
  • increased overall passenger traffic on the airline’s flights by 16.2% over 2007
  • flew 3.2 billion passenger-kilometers compared with 2.7 passenger-kilometers in 2007
  • carried 5400 tons of cargo compared to 4,300 tons in 2007
  • established a passenger load factor of 74.8%, an increase of 3 points over 2007
  • increased the share of all electronic tickets to 84%


Despite the unreasonably high prices for aviation fuel in Ukraine compared to airports in Western Europe where the price has been consistently dropping in line with the world oil price, UIA has successfully decreased fuel charges on all its internal and international flights through technological improvements and careful flight management by pilots.  The internal Lvov-Simferopol flight for example has seen a 12-fold decrease in the fuel charges.  The fuel charges on the majority of international flights operated by UIA have also decreased further reducing the overall ticket price.

According to the annual survey conducted by a leading English-language periodical in Ukraine in 2008, UIA received the largest number of reader votes outstripping by a large margin all local and international airlines operating flights to Ukraine.  UIA was also awarded the coveted “Best Ukrainian Airline 2008” at the annual meeting of the Tourist Press Club Journalist Association.