YEREVAN. – Czech Airlines, one of the oldest air companies in Europe, has recently marked the 90th anniversary and the 10th anniversary of the first flight between Yerevan and Prague. Around 250,000 passengers were transported by Czech Airlines in this drection. On this occasion Armenian News-NEWS.am interviewed Chief Commercial Officer, Member of the Board of Directors Jiří Marek, who has arrived in Yerevan to celebrate the events.    

Mr. Marek, how do you assess your company’s achievements in Armenia? What are the development prospects for your company in this market?

The best achievement is that we are sitting here today and that we can celebrate the ten years of Prague-Yerevan flight. We opened the flight ten years ago with two weekly frequencies and this year we already fly daily which means that we are constantly increasing the passenger numbers and this ended in increasing the number of flights.

There have been many speculations about the prices for services provided by Zvartnots airport.  What can you say about the prices as a representative of an air company?

Of course, as a customer, I would always say it is too expensive and I would like it to be cheaper. But on the other hand, the airport prices are irrespective from pricing structure.  We construct our fares as we need as an airline customer, and the airport constructs their charges which are charged from the passenger. Of course, the part of the ticket price of the passenger belongs to the airport.

Global crisis has recently affected nearly all branches of economy, including air transportation. What policy have you adopted to overcome the consequences? Is your company reducing the number of flights or investing more?

We are actually a little bit ahead of the competition because we started our restructuring program already three years ago. So our main reduction of the capacity and destination was last year. This year we are increasing approximately five percent in our capacity.

Your company is one of the oldest in Europe. Taking into account your 90 years’ experience how do you see the future 20 years for the field? What changes will be made?

In case of Czech Airlines, this year was marked by good achievement, because we found a strategic investor to our company. Since the end of June we have had Korean Air from South Korea as a 44- percent shareholder of the Czech Airlines. This strategic partnership will help develop more connections in Europe. There will be connections from Asia to Prague and we will be kind of secondary hub for Korea.

Our region is faced with many political problems which definitely affect air transportation. Turkey sometimes says it will close the airspace for Armenia, Azerbaijan threatens to shoot down aircrafts heading to Karabakh, Georgia has problems with Russia. How do you manage to overcome these problems and what challenges are you faced with?

One of the basic rules for us is commenting on politics is for politicians. We do not comment on politics. We are coming here for business.  Our domain is Central, Eastern Europe, CIS countries.  Our culture our history and our language skills are close to this region. We are the first choice for the customers from this region. Almost all our crews speak Russian which is also very common language for this region and it is preferential for many locals to choose the Czech Airlines.

As you mentioned, your company has recently established cooperation with Korean Air and is promoting flights to the East. Do you think the future of air transportation is in the eastern market?

Yes, definitely. The statistics shows that Europe is stagnating or going down minus two percent. The only growing market is Asia, Latin America.  Africa is also slowly becoming a growing market. Taking into account our interests and also attractiveness of Prague for the Asian people, we definitely go in that direction.