Turkey abruptly restricted its airspace to low-cost Armenian airline FlyOne Armenia on Saturday.
Aram Ananyan, the chairman of FlyOne, said, “For reasons incomprehensible to us and without any obvious grounds, Turkish aviation authorities revoked the permission previously granted to the FlyOne Armenia airline to operate flights to Europe through Turkish airspace.”
“Our airline and our passengers were placed in an uncomfortable situation because Turkish aviation authorities implemented the cancellation without prior notice,” he added.
The Moldovan airline FlyOne’s affiliate, FlyOne Armenia, started operations in December 2021.
According to Ananyan’s statement to Armenpress in February 2023, the airline operated flights to 14 locations in eight different European and Middle Eastern countries using five Airbus aircraft.
Since the 1990s, Ankara has not maintained diplomatic or business ties with Armenia.
The main point of contention between the two countries is to Armenia’s claims that the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of contemporary Turkey, slaughtered 1.5 million people in 1915.
Armenia claims that this amounts to genocide, a claim Turkey refutes.
To allow relief for the victims of the terrible earthquakes in southern Turkey, a border gate between the neighbours was opened in February for the first time in 35 years.
https://www.firstpost.com/world/turkey-accused-of-restricting-airspace-for-armenian-plane-12528972.html