On 6 December 2018, a meeting of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Uzbekistan Aziz Abdukhakimov with the regional director of the concern Lufthansa AG in the CIS countries and the Russian Federation Ronald Schultz was held.
The goal was to discuss promising areas of mutually beneficial cooperation.
The parties discussed the possibility of regular flights between Uzbekistan and Germany.
During the talks, the Uzbek side informed the foreign partner about the measures taken by the country’s leadership in development of the tourism sector of Uzbekistan. It was noted that over ten months of 2018, the number of foreign citizens, visiting Uzbekistan exceeded last year’s figures by almost 2 times and amounted to about 4.4 million.
Significant growth was ensured by the visa-free regime introduced in 2018 for citizens of 9 countries. It was underlined that the introduction of a visa-free regime is now being considered for a number of states, including the countries of the European Union.
Lufthansa is invited to consider the possibility of organizing regular flights to Uzbekistan.
Ronald Schultz noted that he had arrived in Uzbekistan in order to study the possibilities for the airline to resume its presence in the Uzbek market. Now Lufthansa intends to transfer its flights on the route “Frankfurt-Baku-Ashgabat” to “Frankfurt-Baku-Tashkent”. In this case, at the initial stage, it is planned to make three flights a week.
In turn, the Uzbek side expressed its readiness to assist in this issue. At the meeting, they discussed the issue of introducing the “open sky” principle for a number of regional airports of Uzbekistan, including in Karshi and Andijan. Thus, it is possible to turn one of the regional airports of Uzbekistan into a transit hub for Lufthansa.
Ronald Schultz was also informed about the diversification of the national tourist infrastructure, in particular, in construction of hotel facilities. During the conversation, cooperation with the German hotel chain Plaza Hotel and RIMC Hotel was noted.
In addition, the parties underlined that the German airline may consider Uzbekistan as a transit aviation hub for flights from Europe to Southeast Asia.
