Belavia CEO on sanctions: no airline likely to admit they produce benefit

The sanctions imposed by the West on Belavia and Russian airlines have a negative impact, including on the global aviation industry – as stated by Belavia CEO Igor Cherginets, sb.by reports

“Belavia and Aeroflot are members of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which unites probably 90 percent of the world's passenger air transport," Mr. Cherginets noted. “We meet once a year, and, in 2023, our meeting took place in Istanbul. We talked with Western colleagues and experts then. Naturally, everyone speaks one and the same language behind the scenes, agreeing that there is no need in such restrictions since they produce an extremely negative impact on the economic performance of the industry and passengers. Clearly, the latter suffer: people cannot use a direct flight, some transfers are needed, the flight time increases, and all this affects the cost of tickets. As regards airlines, the effect is also negative. I think that no airline can actually admit that these sanctions are beneficial. All of them faced an increase in expenses and personnel, and these factors also affect the financial result.”

At the same time, Belavia CEO stressed that Western airlines cannot openly protest, because they are not free in their reactions and actions. “Most Western airlines cannot – sorry for saying that – go on TV and openly talk about the negative effect, call for resuming traffic with Russia or Belarus, simplify something. Of course, they voice this behind the scenes. Among other things, the IATA heads admit that the restrictions – which make businesses and people suffer – are useless,” Mr. Cherginets added.