The Georgian Foreign Ministry has denied permission for a Georgian-registered plane to charter a flight to Kosovo for the upcoming away matches of the Armenian national football team. There are documents in which the Football Federation of Armenia states that “there is no diplomatic permission from the Georgian Foreign Ministry to carry out a charter flight to the planned destinations (Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, and Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro).”
The Armenian national football team will play a friendly match against the national teams of Kosovo on June 6 and Montenegro on June 9. The team is scheduled to first fly on a charter flight to Pristina, from there to Podgorica, and then return to Yerevan. Since Georgia refused to grant the appropriate permission, the Football Federation of Armenia was forced to revise the cost of the charter flight. If earlier the company Sky and Mother, responsible for the transportation of the team, was to provide this service for 82.7 million drams, then after the changes in the contract the amount was 91 million drams.
The transportation of the Armenian team will be carried out by Sky and Mother airlines on European aircraft: Lithuanian Boeing 737 KlasJet and Brazilian Embraer 190, which will carry 55 passengers. Sky and Mother was founded in October 2021. Currently, the shareholder of the company is Edgar Movsisyan, registered in Malatia-Sebastia, but in 2022-2024, the majority shareholder of the company was Gevorg Khachatryan, who is now the deputy director of Sky and Mother. Previously, he held the position of deputy director of Armenia Airlines.
From the Sky and Mother website, we learn that this is a new tour operator in Armenia, whose team has almost 10 years of experience in the aviation industry and provides services in the field of tourism and aviation, as well as organizes charter flights.
The Football Federation of Armenia, touching on this topic, responded to Radio Liberty that “the Georgian Foreign Ministry has never denied the Armenian side the right to carry out a charter flight through Georgian airspace.” In a second request sent to the FFA, we referred to their own agreement, according to which there was no corresponding permission from the Georgian Foreign Ministry, and also asked to explain why the FFA changed the cost of air travel. The Federation never responded to this second request.
Sky and Mother, answering questions from Radio Liberty, reported that the aircraft registered in Georgia was unable to obtain diplomatic permission from the Georgian Foreign Ministry to fly to Kosovo. “The flights will be carried out on aircraft with European registration, which affected the change in prices,” the company said.
Georgia does not recognise Kosovo’s independence and there are no diplomatic relations, which is presumably the basis for denying permission for the flight.