YEREVAN, DECEMBER 27, ARMENPRESS. The former chief of the aviation authority of Armenia Shahen Petrosyan says he is positively appreciating the reports on potential re-opening of the Yerevan-Istanbul flights.

Petrosyan served as Director of the General Department of Civil Aviation from 1993 to 1996.

Speaking to ARMENPRESS, he revealed a few details from the history of establishment of air connection between Armenia and Turkey in the early 90s, noting that at that time it was the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC) that forced Turkey to open its airspace with Armenia.

Petrosyan said that when he was first appointed as GDCA chief in 1993, he asked specialists to elaborate why the Armenia-Turkey air border was closed, and it turned out that when Armenia gained its independence the aviation authorities did not warn that air borders are subject to confirmation as well. The Armenian government applied to ECAC, and meanwhile President Levon-Ter Petrosyan and his chief advisor Gerard Libaridian were engaged in negotiations with Turkey’s leadership.

“I notified the government about this and said that this issue must somehow be resolved because in addition to being in a land blockade we were also in an air blockade. And Turkey didn’t have the right to do so. Turkey was bringing forward justifications saying “the border which we have is the border of the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore.” And we were forced to approve that this is the border of Armenia. The ECAC helped us a lot. We struggled for it for more than a year, and eventually ECAC forced Turkey to open its air border with Armenia. The process was very difficult because of the absence of diplomatic relations. And suddenly one day my Turkish counterpart called me and said “Efendi Petrosyan, can you come? We’ve already prepared the paperwork to open the air border”. I answered “perhaps you could come?” He said “no, we’ve already finalized everything.”

A large Armenian delegation then took off from Yerevan on a small YAK-40 to Ankara and on April 20, 1995 the agreement on opening of the air border was signed between Armenia and Turkey, Petrosyan said.

“At that time we had two air corridors, the H50 and H51. One of them was passing above Mount Ararat, and the other above Kars. This was very beneficial for Armenia because transit aircraft began using this route when flying from Europe to the Far East. Armenia was getting 1 million dollars yearly for aero-navigation thanks to this,” Petrosyan said.

Thus, in May 1995 Armenian Airlines started regular, twice-a-week flights from Yerevan to Istanbul. There were plans to start the Gyumri-Kars flights, but the project failed.

From the early 2000s to 2016 the Turkish Pegasus airline was operating the Istanbul-Yerevan flights, but the flights were cancelled when the situation around Nagorno Karabakh flared-up when the 2016 April War began.

The Turkish authorities earlier announced that Pegasus will re-launch Yerevan flights, and meanwhile the Armenian aviation authorities confirmed that FlyOne Armenia airline will also operate the Yerevan-Istanbul flights.

Interview by Aram Sargsyan