Uzbekistan Airports, on the initiative of the Ministry of Transport, is creating a subsidiary airline Silk Avia for domestic flights. The new carrier plans to launch flights next year, Uzbekistan Airports said.
Silk Avia was registered in September this year, and on the sidelines of the Dubai Airshow-2021 International Airshow, which took place from November 14 to 18, Uzbekistan Airports and Dubai's HAS Aviation GT signed an agreement to develop a strategy to create a domestic airline in Uzbekistan.
“The creation of a local flights airline is important to stimulate business activity in Uzbekistan and promote domestic tourism, which, in turn, will affect the increase in the coefficient of aviation mobility of the population, showing the average number of flights per inhabitant of the country,” Uzbekistan Airports said in a statement.
The CEO of Uzbekistan Airports Rano Juraeva highlighted: “We have set a goal to create an airline that will offer domestic flights for Uzbeks at affordable prices. Until recently, the lack of direct flights connecting the cities of Uzbekistan was a big problem. To get from Samarkand to Khorezm, passengers had to fly through Tashkent. Our task is to organize internal flight routes not only according to the point to hub principle, but also according to the point to point model. "
The new company plans to launch 40 flights and purchase up to 70-seat regional aircrafts. “The tariffs will be comparable to those of the railway service. This will have a beneficial effect on the domestic tourism, and on the final cost of air tickets for the consumer," Rano Juraeva noted.
The new airline is also necessary for the development of local airports, so at the first stage it is created by the management company Uzbekistan Airports, the company added. In the future, the carrier is planned to be privatized.
“Silk Avia does not position itself as a competitor to the national air carrier Uzbekistan Airways, but acts as a partner in organizing domestic transportation,” Uzbekistan Airports concluded.
