The FlyOne Armenia airline has applied to the Armenian Civil Aviation Committee (CCA) for a permit to perform charter flights from Yerevan to Turkish Istanbul and back, Lilit Aghabekyan, a press assistant to the head of the Civil Aviation Committee, told ARKA news agency.
"We received the application yesterday at the end of the day,’ she said adding that the application will be considered.
Aghabekyan explained that any application from an airline goes through a number of processes in special formats. "If all documents meet our standards, the airline will receive a permit. I cannot say exactly how long this process will last regarding the FlyOne Armenia’s application," she said.
She also said that no applications from other airlines for permission to fly from Armenia to Turkey have been received so far.
Aram Ananyan, chairman of the Board of Directors of FlyOne Armenia, told a local news agency that the airline had earlier submitted a similar application to the Turkish aviation authorities to receive a permit for Yerevan-Istanbul-Yerevan charter flights.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on December 16 that Ankara was considering the applications of Turkish and Armenian airlines for operating flights between Istanbul and Yerevan.
Turkish mass media outlets quoted Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Adil Karaismayoglu as saying December 23 that flights between Armenia and Turkey will be resumed in the coming days after a 2.5-year break. According to the Minister, the Turkish Pegasus Airlines will carry out the flights.
According to Armenian media reports, the FlyOne Armenia airline is affiliated with the family of Khachatur Sukiasyan, a wealthy businessman, owner of SIL Concern and an MP from the Civil Contract party.
The company was awarded the aircraft operator certificate at the end of October 2021 by the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia.
The company said earlier it had invested more than 60 million Euros in the Armenian market. The company's fleet consists of Airbus A320 aircrafts, which will operate both scheduled and charter flights.
Each aircraft has 180 seats and meets all International Air Transport Association (IATA) and EASA safety standards. Also, in pandemic conditions, the aircraft are equipped with HEPA air filters, which remove 99.97% of viruses and bacteria.
Although Turkey was one of the first countries to recognize Armenia’s independence from the former Soviet Union, the countries have no diplomatic ties and Turkey shut down their common border in 1993, in a show of solidarity with Azerbaijan which was locked in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Turkey also refuses to recognize the Armenian genocide, committed during 1915-1923 when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were massacred by the Ottoman government. The overwhelming majority of historians widely view the event as genocide.
In 2009, Ankara and Yerevan reached an agreement in Zurich to establish diplomatic relations and to open their joint border, but Turkey later said it could not ratify the deal until Armenia withdrew from Nagorno-Karabakh.
Last year, Turkey strongly backed Azerbaijan in the six-week conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh which ended with a Russia-brokered peace deal that saw Azerbaijan gain control of a significant part of Nagorno-Karabakh.
