The excitement following last November’s decision by the Armenian government regarding to Syunik Airport and declaring the start of flights linking Yerevan and the Syunik provincial capital of Kapan, scheduled for this month, soon dissipated.
“Everyone today accepts the fact that without the planes, helicopters of Armenia’s civil aviation department, and the Stepanakert, Goris and Sisian airports, we would have lost the Karabakh War. This proves just how important civil aviation, a developed technical reserve base, and, first and foremost, a national cadre of aviators, is to any sovereign state,” says Atbashyan.
The Kapan Municipal Council, by a vote of 10-0 on August 23, approved a measure to lease the operating rights of the local airport to an outfit called Syunik Airport LLC for 25 years.
It will cost around 20,000 AMD (US$ 42) to fly one way from Kapan, the regional capital of Armenia’s Syunik Province, to Yerevan, the country’s capital, according to the province’s governor.
Daily flights in and out of Kapan soon increased to 10-12. On days featuring football matches in Yerevan, some 16 flights took off. Ten s of thousands flew to Yerevan and back without incident. The Kapan airport closed after 1990, due to several objective and subjective reasons, and fell into disrepair.
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