Not Europe: Why there are no cheap air tickets in Ukraine like in the West
Contrary to the expectations and promises of officials, Western low-cost airlines that have entered the Ukrainian market keep prices for Ukrainian passengers much higher than in Europe.
Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine in 2014-2015, Alexander Kava, stated this on air on the Apostrophe.TV channel, PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Unlike other modes of transport, aviation uses dynamic pricing. These are quite complex algorithms - for each specific flight it is calculated how many tickets to offer at what price. Typically, there are 20 fares, depending on the demand trends and demand history for a given flight, the program decides how many tickets for a given flight to offer at what price. To sell cheap tickets, you need to be able to sell expensive tickets. If expensive tickets are not sold, there are no cheap tickets.
When we were in the pre-Covid period, Ryanair came here, Wizz Air returned to more active work and began opening flights. But our tariffs were still, as a rule, higher on average than in Europe. This is due to the fact that it was very difficult to sell expensive tickets in our market. Accordingly, airlines were forced to reduce the range of tariffs in order to earn and obtain the required level of profit.
Wizz Air entered the market in 2008, they launched seven domestic flights. This was a marketing step; tickets were sold at a price of 80 hryvnia. Naturally, this price even then was much lower than the cost. But some flights that the airline initially announced did not even launch, for example, flights Kyiv-Zaporozhye, Kharkov-Simferopol. Passengers did not buy tickets even at such low prices,” said Alexander Kava.
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