Georgia has banned Belarus’ state-owned airline Belavia from flying to its airports using American Boeing aircraft due to US sanctions, the Georgian Civil Aviation Authority said.
This is how the Georgian aviation regulator commented on the new sanctions against Belavia announced by the US Treasury Department on August 9.
The Georgian Civil Aviation Authority said that it had banned Boeing flights from Belarus in June on the basis of the manufacturer’s sanctions. At the same time, the Georgian regulator is still studying the new US sanctions and will give its response only afterwards.
Although Belavia has been banned from flying to Georgia using American-made aircraft, the airline continues to operate flights from Minsk to three Georgian cities at once – the capital Tbilisi, Batumi, and Kutaisi. Belavia does this with Brazilian Embraer aircraft, which are not on the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions list.
Sanctions against Belavia
Since 2021, the European Union and the United States have imposed sanctions on Belavia for various actions of the Belarusian authorities, which has completely destroyed the airline’s model of operation. Prior to that, Belavia relied on the transit of passengers through Minsk from Russian cities and eastern countries to Ukraine and the European Union.
Initially, Belavia was banned from flying to Europe after Belarusian opposition leader Roman Protasevich was removed from the plane in Minsk in 2021 after a forced landing of a Ryanair plane and then arrested. In addition, as part of the EU sanctions, leasing airlines terminated aircraft lease agreements with Belavia, which reduced its fleet by almost half.
In 2022, the U.S. government banned the supply of new American aircraft and spare parts to Belarusian airlines because of the Belarusian authorities’ support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The US sanctions also included a ban on the service of Boeing Belavia airliners at foreign airports. However, so far this has only affected Belavia’s flights to Tel Aviv. A Belarusian airline has closed its flights to Israel because the local airport refused to service its flights due to US sanctions.
A new statement from the Georgian Civil Aviation Authority shows that US Treasury sanctions have added to Belavia’s problems on flights to Georgia, but have not yet stopped such flights.
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