Translated material
Non-child flight
Russia was never able to convince Georgia to fly Aeroflot planes
Russian-Georgian consultations on organizing charter flights between the two countries in the summer ended without results. Ivan Volynkin, Minister-Counselor of the Russian Embassy in Georgia, told the ITAR-TASS agency about this yesterday.An agreement in principle on summer charters between Tbilisi and Moscow was reached in early July . However, since then the parties have not been able to agree on whose planes these flights will be carried out. The Georgian side insists that flight rights be equally divided between the designated air carriers of the two countries: Aeroflot and the Georgian airline Airzena.
Russia refuses to allow Airzena into its airspace until Georgia pays off debts for Russian air navigation support previously accumulated by the airlines of the Transcaucasian republic. Let us recall that it was this debt, totaling $3 million, that was named as the official reason for the termination of regular air traffic between the two countries in October 2006.
Until the problem is resolved, Russia agrees that the summer charter program will be fully implemented by Aeroflot. But this does not suit Georgia.
Since direct air communication (as well as communication by other modes of transport) between Russia and Georgia was interrupted in October last year, in the wake of an acute political crisis that began with the arrest of Russian officers in Tbilisi, it is possible to fly from one country to another only through third states: Ukraine, Armenia, Turkey, etc. As an exception, only three direct charter flights Tbilisi-Moscow were carried out in April - on Easter.
During the 2007 school holidays, the parties agreed to repeat this experience and launch charters so that children, students and their parents living in Georgia and Russia could visit each other. Initially, there was talk of two or three round trip flights weekly between July 3 and August 31. At the end of June, Russian Ambassador to Georgia Vyacheslav Kovalenko, who had recently returned to his duty station, even spoke out in favor of restoring direct flights: “I associate with this the improvement in relations between Russia and Georgia as a whole,” he said then.
However, yesterday, when half of the agreed period had already passed, it turned out that even the charter program had not been finally agreed upon. Anonymous Georgian sources explained to ITAR-TASS yesterday that “the operating Georgian airlines,” including Airzena, have no debts to Russian air navigation services. These debts were accumulated by other now-bankrupt airlines. In principle, recognizing the existence of the debt problem, the Georgian authorities believe that it has nothing to do with the issue of organizing Airzena flights to Russia.
The position of the Russian side, stated yesterday to Vremya Novostey by the press service of the Russian Ministry of Transport, is that summer transportation of children is not a commercial issue, but a humanitarian one. “Responding to the request of the Georgian public, the Russian aviation authorities proposed to organize such transportation by Aeroflot. This proposal remains in force,” the transport department said. For its part, Aeroflot is ready to begin flights to Georgia “immediately as soon as the authorities of both countries agree on this,” company spokeswoman Irina Dannenberg told Vremya Novostei yesterday. However, the holidays will soon end, and the problem will apparently go away on its own.