Low-cost airlines are waiting for the opening of Ukrainian airports

Airlines like many others, are closely following the progress of the peace negotiations in Ukraine right now.

Director of Norwegian’s network strategy Silje Tynes says that Ukrainian airports have been kept so well on standby for many airlines that even a ceasefire agreement could make airlines start flights to Ukraine quickly.

“There are so many Ukrainians all over Europe, 40,000 in Norway as well. That would be a drastic spike in demand,” says Tynes in an interview with HS.

In addition to Norwegian, other airlines are also interested in the Ukrainian market. Financial Times said at the end of last week that, among others, Ryanair, Wizz Air and EesyJet are already looking at Ukrainian airports with interest.

According to the newspaper, European low-cost airlines foresee a boom in “disaster tourism” after Ukraine is able to open its commercial airports to tourists again. The fields have been closed since the Russian invasion, i.e. almost four years already.

Tynes decides with his teams where Norwegian will open new flight routes. There are 400 routes, and Norwegian currently flies to 23 destinations from Finland.

Tynes says that flights to Finland work well. The plane occupancy rate on Finnish routes is 75 percent, which means that three quarters of the seats can be sold.

The planning of new routes starts at airlines by collecting statistical data. In Europe, airlines closely examine, for example, information from the Amadeus reservation system.

Airports, tourism organizations and various private analysis companies also produce data for airlines.

“We look for sites where there is either no or too little supply,” explains Tynes.

For example It was decided to open the Helsinki-Bucharest route when there were no direct flights to the Romanian capital from Helsinki, but statistics showed that many passengers went there or from there to Helsinki via detours, via other airports.

Norwegian had already noticed that a similar route from Arlanda in Stockholm was doing well.

“You can see a strong trend from that.”

When the need for the destination has been determined to be sufficient, the route planners next find out what kind of passengers would be coming to the route.

Business travelers need morning and evening flights and several flights a week, for tourists and those visiting relatives, for example, Friday and Monday flights are often enough for a long weekend.

Then the data collected by the airports on visitors is examined and the prices of competing airlines are examined.

Often airlines get excited about the same destinations at the same time.

Troms in Norway and Rovaniemi in Finland have grown rapidly in popularity in recent years, Tynes says.

The number of passengers on Norwegian’s Rovaniemi routes increased by 30 percent last year, and the Barcelona-Rovaniemi route was immediately sold out.

Now Finnair and Norwegian have both figured out that they want to fly from Helsinki to Tirana, the capital of Albania.

“We will open Tirana in the summer, and Finnair said it will open the same route for the summer as well.”

The new ones the planning of the routes starts 15–18 months before their opening, because the personnel need the information 10–12 months before the opening of the route due to the planning of their own work shifts.

“We are now planning for summer 2027.”