Wizz Air temporarily suspends base operations in Kutaisi
By Natalia Kochiashvili
Thursday, July 2
Low-budget airline Wizz Air is temporarily suspending base operations in Kutaisi, Georgia, which does not mean that the company will suspend operations in Georgia. Andras Rado, the head of the WizzAir communications department, spoke about the company's plans at a press conference.
“We will monitor the development of events... we must follow international and local rules,” he said.
According to him, the company will offer other opportunities to employees of the Kutaisi base. “We are working to keep jobs in Georgia and at the Kutaisi base,” he said. According to Rado, the company will not fire employees at the Kutaisi base and will relocate them to other parts of its network. He says, it is too early to speculate on other future plans.
Georgian Economy Minister Natia Turnava says the company is not leaving the Georgian market and that the technical issue is where the company's planes will be based, in Georgia or in another country. The minister explained that the purpose of the overhaul of the aircraft is to reduce the costs of the company. She reassured the population that the company is not leaving Georgia.
“I have just talked to the company personally and it will confirm publicly that it continues to cooperate with the Georgian government and Georgia, remains loyal to its customers, our citizens, who have been traveling from Georgia and vice versa at a very comfortable and quite affordable price through WizzAir all these years and with our support,” she said.
The company's planes have been flying from Georgia for several years. Wizz Air operated flights from Georgia on both base aircraft (Georgian crew) and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Wizz Air planes used to fly to more than 25 destinations in 13 countries from Georgia to Georgia before the pandemic, now none of the flights are completed.
On June 30th, WizzAir canceled most flights until May 2021 - as of August 2020, only eight flights are available for flights to Warsaw, Dortmund, Riga, Vilnius, Athens, Budapest, Vienna and Larnaca.
The Civil Aviation Agency has issued a statement saying that regular air traffic will not be resumed until August 1st. They urged citizens to refrain from buying tickets.
Until now, high-ranking officials have said they are waiting for an official document from the European Union. Foreign Minister David Zalkaliani said on June 30th that the government's decision on air flights would be in line with the EU's decision.
As of now, the EU member states are starting to open their borders to third-country nationals. At this stage, the restriction is also lifted for Georgia, which the EU considers safe.
According to Zalkaliani: “The EU member states will soon start sorting out the relevant criteria with the countries on the safe list, in order to be careful to move citizens in both directions.”
Georgia's borders are still closed. The government's anti-crisis plan, launched in early May, was supposed to resume hosting foreign tourists from July 1st, but in late June it became known that regular flights would not be resumed until August 1st. The Georgian government cites the deterioration of the epidemic situation in many countries as the reason.
