Airlines cancel flights overnights at Kyiv

A number of European airlines have adjusted their schedules to Kyiv Boryspil to avoid overnighting their aircraft at the airport as the risk of a further Russian invasion looms.

Lufthansa overnight flight LH2546/2547 from Munich was rescheduled between January 22 and January 26 to operate as a morning rotation. The original schedule, with the aircraft spending the night on the Boryspil apron, was restored as of January 28. The airline told Reuters that the change was purely for operational reasons. Sister carrier Austrian Airlines (OS, Vienna) reduced its OS667/668 rotation from Vienna to a weekly service but continues to overnight the aircraft in Kyiv.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines cancelled its overnight flight KL1387/1382 from Amsterdam Schiphol as of January 23. It operated the rotation on January 29, although the departure from the Netherlands was delayed by nearly five hours to avoid overnight parking at Kyiv airport.

Swiss has also adjusted its schedules for services from Zurich. Ryanair confirmed to Al Jazeera news that it has reduced the number of its flights to/from Ukraine. Out of non-based airlines, airBaltic appears to be the only one that has not tweaked its overnighting schedules over the last few days.

Russia is said to be gathering significant troop numbers near its border with Ukraine, as well as in Belarus, which borders Ukraine from the north, promoting concerns that Moscow may make further incursions into its eastern neighbour. Russia has been occupying the Crimea peninsula in southern Ukraine since 2014, while pro-Russian separatists have established two de facto states in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas.