Bees are buzzing in Prague with a new route
Bees Airline, the Ukrainian start-up, started serving Prague yesterday when it inaugurated its new scheduled service from the Czech capital to the Ukrainian coastal city of Odessa.
Bees land in Prague
Bees Airline landed in Prague yesterday on its first scheduled flight to the Czech capital.
As of yesterday, Bees flights between Odessa (ODS) and Prague (PRG) operate as follows:
- Flight 7B203 leaves ODS at 9:30 a.m. and arrives at PRG at 10:45 a.m.
- Flight 7B204 leaves PRG at 11:45 am and arrives at ODS at 3:00 pm
Flights take place every Thursday and Sunday, and tickets are on sale on the Bees website until Sunday, January 16.
All flights are expected to be operated by Boeing 737-800s in Bees’ colorful livery. The airline has four 737s in its fleet.
Bees operates the flight as part of a W-model to make it work in an operational manner, as its base is in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev (IEV), and not in Odessa.
The model is as follows:
- Flight 7B103 from IEV to ODS
- Flight 7B203 from ODS to PRG
- Flight 7B204 from PRG to ODS
- Flight 7B104 from ODS to IEV
An established market left vacant
Bees Airline does not face any competition on this new route, but the market between Prague and Odessa is well established. The route was once served by the Czech national airline, Czech Airlines.
Czech Airlines filed for bankruptcy in February this year. Over the past year, it has significantly reduced its network of routes, as its parent airline, Smartwings, kept Europe’s most lucrative markets alive this summer.
The Czech national airline even planned to resume flights from Prague to Odessa this year when it announced a wave of resumption of routes in May. However, this plan failed.
Thus, Bees is now the only operator between Odessa and Prague, but, at this stage, it still maintains lower fares than full-service carriers operating between Ukraine and the Czech Republic.
For example, Bees’ Prague-Odessa flight this Sunday is currently selling for $ 62.
Meanwhile, for comparison, Czech Airlines is selling tickets for its flight from Prague to Kiev this Sunday for $ 123 and Ukraine International Airlines for $ 292.
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Aviation is booming in Ukraine
Ukraine has seen a wave of new road launches recently after the country signed an open skies deal with the European Union last week.
Not even a day later, Wizz Air responded with a major expansion of its operations between Ukraine and the European Union by announcing that it would base seven more planes in the country by the summer of 2022 and that it would launch 26 incredible new roads from four Ukrainian cities.
It will be interesting to see what other new routes to the European Union will also be launched by Bees in response to the deal.
What do you think of Bees Airline? Let us know what you think of this new route in the comments below.
