"Criminal attitudes" blamed for past problems(300 words)

Published: 1/3/2001

300 Ovanes Yeritsyan, head of the Armenian Department of Civil Aviation, has reported that the state-owned Armenian Airlines is now earning $1.5m a month in revenues. This, he attributes to its recent restructuring in August 2000. He goes on to say that the problems of the airline have been largely caused by the previous management's “criminal attitude”, which has resulted in some extremely disadvantageous leases for the airline's Airbuses; these have recently been reduced from $720,000 to $345,000 for an A-310-200. The debate about the suitability of these aircraft for the airline remains in play, with Dmitry Atabashyan's (Chairman of Armenia's National Aviation Union) comments continuing to challenge the airline's operation of the aircraft. The National Aviation Union estimates that losses from operating the Airbuses in 1999 ran to $5m, resulting in the airline's poor financial condition. Whilst reports put annual losses at $7-$11m, published accounts for the year indicated that the air company, including the airline, had incurred an overall deficit of only $1.6m. There remains however, a number of unexplained inconsistencies in the company's finances, including the fuel bought in Moscow at 14% above the prevailing rate. Yeritsyan's optimism about the company's performance may also be viewed in the context of the government's long-delayed privatization of the airline, in its effort to provide financing; this is estimated as being somewhere in the region of $15-20m within 1-2 years. As at 20th October, Armenian Airlines had a fleet of 11 aircraft (3 Tu-154, 3 Yak-40, 2 Tu-134, 2 Il-86 and 1 A-310). It currently operates passenger routes to Amsterdam, Anapa, Athens, Ashgabat, Beirut, Volgograd, Dubai, Ekaterinburg, Kiev, Krasnodar, Larnaka, Mineral Waters, Moscow, Nizhni Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Odessa, Paris, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, St.-Petersburg, Simferopol, Sochi, Stavropol, Tashkent, Teheran, Frankfurt and Zurich.

Article ID: 2268