The reason the Romanian Tarom Airline company is leaving the Armenian market has nothing to do with Armenia. The reason is due to the company’s financial situation. The chair of the Civil Aviation Committee of Armenia, Tatevik Revazian, spoke about this during a session of parliament.
Independent deputy Arman Babajanyan asked Revazian, “The Romanian company announced that the reason why it’s closing is due to unequal competition and it named Ryanair as a main competitor. The press has also stated that Air France and other leading international airlines are also dangerous. Can you explain this? We don’t want to lose our connections with leading airlines because of Ryanair and WizzAir.”
Tatevik Revazian said that, besides financial difficulties, the leadership of Tarom Airline changed six times within the course of one year. “This does not only impact Armenia, but Georgia as well. That press article is flawed because it did not have any basis for its claims. The individual who made these claims was not authorized to speak on behalf of Tarom. This is why we established direct contact with the commercial director of the airline via the embassy. They wrote us a letter describing why they left the market. Ryanair did help to cause competition to increase, but that did not only make things more difficult for Armenia, but for Romania and Georgia as well. As a national transportation company, they are now having difficulties coming out of this situation.”
Luiza Sukiasyan
