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Ryanair said on Thursday it plans to base up to 30 new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft at Ukraine's three main airports and fly over five million passengers a year when the fighting eventually ends. The airline's statement came as Ryanair Chief Executive Michael O'Leary met Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister for Restoration Oleksandr Kubrakov in Kyiv and visited Boryspil international airport, 30km east of the capital.
The Irish company, which was Ukraine's second-largest airline before Russia's invasion, plans to expand from just serving Kharkiv and Kherson to operating 600 weekly flights connecting the three main airports of Kyiv, Lviv, and Odesa to over 20 European capitals. It also plans to open daily domestic flights between the three cities as soon as those airports are able to handle them and double the number of seats to, from, and within Ukraine to over 10 million within five years.
Ryanair said the 30 new jets it plans to base in Kyiv, Lviv, and Odesa will be worth over $3 billion. Ryanair sealed a multibillion-dollar deal for as many as 300 new Boeing jets in May. "Ryanair has committed to returning with low fare flights to and from Ukraine within 8 weeks of the reopening of Ukraine air space," O'Leary, who has previously pledged to return quickly to Ukraine once the conflict has ended, said in the statement.