The Supreme Court, as part of the panel of judges of the Administrative Court of Cassation, satisfied the complaints of the State Aviation Service of Ukraine (SASU) and SkyUp Airlines, which means that the Kyiv — Istanbul — Kyiv route will be further operated by the airline. The corresponding decision has already been published in the State Register of Court Decisions and is not subject to appeal.
«Finally, we passed through this strange court process, in which another airline tried to question the authority of SASU to allocate frequencies to destinations, and the court of the first instance, for some reason, have upheld such demands,» comments Dmytro Tolkachov, director of legal affairs at SkyUp Airlines. «We are glad that we managed to reach a fair decision, because SkyUp received these flights completely legally as a result of the official procedure. And the most important thing is that for our passengers this whole story passed unnoticed, and they continue to discover the beauty of Istanbul together with us.»
Now SkyUp has three frequencies on the Kyiv — Istanbul — Kyiv route, and all of them are in use: flights are operated on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The airline received the frequencies as part of the official procedure, which is the decision of the State Civil Aviation Service of Ukraine No. 596 dated 04/28/2020. However, the airline, which had been deprived of frequencies on the same route much earlier due to non-performance of flights, tried to appeal this decision. More information about the situation can be found in the article SkyUp Protects European Standards of Aviation Business in Ukraine.
According to Boryspil International Airport data, flights to Istanbul are among the most popular, and over the past few months they have consistently been in the TOP-3 busiest destinations.
SkyUp Airlines offers not only tickets to Istanbul, but also citybreaks, when a hotel and tickets can be booked in one click on the airline's website. The same service is available to passengers traveling to Istanbul from Lviv, Odesa or Kharkiv.