A plane of the Ukrainian airline SkyUp which was flying Madeira to Kyiv had to land in Chisinau. All because the lessor prohibited the flight to Ukraine.
The UR-SQO aircraft should have landed at Borispol airport at 03:50 on February 13. The passengers were informed about the aircraft landing in Chisinau two hours beforehand.
The airline explained that the aircraft lessor from Ireland had banned the landing in Ukraine. All because of fears of a Russian attack.
SkyUP has temporarily halted the sale of tickets for departures from 14 to 16 February 2022. The company is waiting for the situation to be resolved.
This was officially announced by the company’s press service. SkyUP stressed that the situation needs to be resolved at the state level.
“Despite the airline’s best efforts and the readiness of the Ukrainian state structures to address the lessor, the owner of the aircraft provided a categorical refusal at a time when the aircraft was already flying to Kyiv,” SkyUp press service was told.
The 175 passengers were sent home by buses. To note, the distance from the Moldovan capital to the Ukrainian one is 470 kilometers.
By the way, the first airline that banned flying over Ukraine because of the Russian threat is the Dutch KLM. It used to have 2 flights to Kyiv during the day.