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Ukrainian minister plans to expand Turkish aviation market

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Ukraine Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan broke off his Turkish Coast vacations to conduct negotiations behind closed doors with a delegation of senior transport officials who arrived from Istanbul.

EU Reporter can reveal that the meeting was attended by: Antonin Beurrier Deputy Head of TAV Airports, the holding company of Ataturk Airport, Orhan Coşkun, General Director of Atlas Global, and Deputy Chairman & CEO of Turkish Airlines, Bilal Ekşi.

A reliable source close to one of the participants of this closed meeting informed us that the negotiations were initiated by the Ukrainian side.

While precise details of the negotiations have yet to be revealed, the informality and spontaneity of the meeting suggests the importance and urgency of the issues under discussion.

One transport industry expert commented that there was no tough competition between Turkish and Ukrainian transport companies, so therefore issues of market division were unlikely to have been discussed.

Joint projects on the territory of Ukraine would likely be the only burning issue as the country has a relatively poorly developed transport infrastructure, our source said. De facto it would be extremely difficult to implement anything without the involvement of high level officials in any project.

In addition, our source revealed, the issue of AtlasGlobal’s exit from the Ukrainian aviation market was settled by Minister Omelyan. Also, a transit point for Ukrainian passengers in Ataturk is to be created.

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There are numerous reasons for such a decision: firstly, after the failure of the Ryanair launch on the Ukrainian market the Minister needs to strengthen his reputation in the minds of the general public, and secondly, such agreements will help Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport to become a full partner of Kyiv’s Boryspil, instead of being in competition with it.

In terms of passenger numbers, Ataturk airport is the third largest airport in Europe. According to current projections, by the end of 2017 it will serve about 90 million people per annum.

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