The Russian side is negotiating with Armenia about launching direct flights with Crimea - this will be the first flight abroad from the peninsula after a long break.
“All Armenians living in Crimea - and this is more than 20 thousand people - have been waiting for the opportunity to directly get to their homeland for five years. Now we have to take a roundabout route - by car to Krasnodar, and from there by plane to Yerevan. And now I really don’t want to jinx it, because this was discussed many times, and they stopped halfway,” said Georgy Akopyan, chairman of the “Regional Armenian National-Cultural Autonomy of the Republic of Crimea” in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta.
Former Minister of Transport of Crimea Anatoly Tsurkin recalled on Facebook that on the peninsula, after reunification with Russia, they tried to organize direct communication with Istanbul, but it stopped after several flights.
Tsurkin cites the blackout after the sabotage of Ukraine and the problems that arose before the construction of the new airport terminal in Simferopol as the reasons.
“There were both charter and regular ones. The problem was the lack of properly prepared checkpoints at the airport. Then we worked according to a temporary scheme for registering passengers. Subsequent heads of the transport department “gave up” on all this air transportation. Now in the new terminal all the requirements of the border service are met - it’s a sin not to fly,” he argues.
“The airport makes money by processing flights. More flights - more money. The departure/arrival areas for international flights must be closed 2 hours before the arrival/departure of the flight. These are the rules. That is, no one can be in this area of the airport. Thus, in the old terminal, taking into account the low capacity, the closure of zones for a long time led to a decrease in the processing of domestic flights. Loss of money... The new terminal already has a new area for international flights,” explains the former head of the Republic’s Ministry of Transport.