Group CEO of Ryanair Michael O'Leary: What Ukraine needs now, apart from defeating Russia, is a serious plan for a very aggressive reopening of Ukrainian aviation

The exclusive interview with Michael O'Leary, Group CEO of Ryanair, to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency

Text: Alena Manzelo

Now I remember that I had the honor to be at your press conference at Boryspil Airport in 2018. No one then could have imagined the events after which we are meeting now...

It’s my first trip to Kyiv since then.

At that time, Ryanair had to make a lot of effort to start flights from Ukraine...

We are very proud and pleased with my backdrop in here. Today we brought this (shows a jacket, reading “Ryanair supporting Ukraine”). We presented it to the minister (Oleksandr Kubrakov). Today we've had a meeting with the minister, a meeting of the Kyiv-Boryspil, Lviv and Odesa airports. So we've had a very good day of meetings talking about how we can reopen air travel to and from Ukraine, as soon as it is declared safe to do so.

Could you tell in detail what was discussed at these meetings?

Sure. We submitted to the minister plan to restart aviation in Ukraine. We've committed that if the EASA confirms opening the skies and there have been competitive cost at the airports, we will put 5 million seats into Ukraine in year one. Within six weeks of the skies reopening, we think it's possible that we can connect Kyiv to 25 European cities.

You said 25 cities... The press release mentioned 20...

Yes, between 20 and 25 European cities from Kyiv, probably 10 from Lviv and Odesa, maybe another five, but all within six weeks of reopening.

What will be the first EU cities to which Ryanair will fly?

They all will be on the same day. But the main cities that we think we start from will be obviously Warsaw, Krakow, Berlin, Frankfurt, Milan, Rome, London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris. So these are all the