Taron-Avia Exits Armenian Market

On November 6, the Committee of Civil Aviation of Armenia announced via its Facebook page that inspections had been conducted at Taron-Avia LLC, and due to recorded deficiencies, the operation of the airline's aircraft operator certificate (AOC) has been suspended. The company was given a six-month deadline to rectify the deficiencies. However, according to the CCA, Taron-Avia has decided to cease operations altogether, leading the CCA to terminate the operation of the airline's AOC No. 049.

This information was reported by hetq.am. It is important to note that an aircraft operator certificate is the document based on which any airline can conduct commercial air transportation. In other words, it is impossible to operate a business in the aviation transportation sector without it. According to the documents at hand, Taron-Avia received this AOC in August 2014. Essentially, after five years, the company has voluntarily decided to cease operations.

Since commencing flights to Russia from Gyumri in the spring of 2017, Taron-Avia has faced serious problems. The company was founded in 2007 as a cargo airline, primarily operating outside Armenia. After lengthy negotiations, in May 2016, the company received a certificate for regular air transportation, which meant it could engage in the transportation of passengers, cargo, and mail (prior to this, Taron-Avia's aircraft were being used for rental operations meeting the needs of African and Asian companies).

From April 2017, Taron-Avia began flights from Shirak Airport in Gyumri to Krasnodar, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, and Moscow. Subsequently, instead of Gyumri-Rostov, the company opened the Yerevan-Moscow route; however, in December 2017, it stopped flights from Gyumri, and in January 2018, from Yerevan. There were two reasons for ceasing flights from Armenia: internal and external.

The internal issue concerned disagreements with the concessionaire of Zvartnots and Shirak airports, Armenia International Airports CJSC. According to the airline, the service package provided to it by the concessionaire differed from the package offered to Aeroflot's subsidiary Pobeda, which was Taron-Avia's only competitor in Gyumri, operating Moscow-Gyumri-Moscow flights daily (currently, Pobeda is the only airline utilizing Shirak).

In turn, the concessionaire stated that Taron-Avia was provided with a comprehensive package of varied services under unprecedented favorable conditions that could not be compared to those offered to Pobeda, which only received basic airport services.

It is also worth mentioning that regarding the aforementioned issues, Taron-Avia had applied to the new government as early as May 2018, requesting the creation of equal competitive conditions in the local market. Later, the operator's owner, Garnik Papikyan, was invited to a meeting at the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and IT at that time to discuss the matter. Nevertheless, since spring 2018, whenever the issue was raised with the airline's commercial director Levon Karami, he indicated that they had not received a response from the executive.

For more details, visit the source site.