Ukraine International Airlines (UIA, Kyiv) has postponed the launch of the long-haul flights on the Kyiv-Beijing route, UIA President Yuriy Miroshnykov has told reporters.

"This is a typically eastern situation, with all of the implied circumstances. We haven't been able to get a permit from the Chinese authorities to fly to Beijing for six months, and that's why we've postponed the launch of the flight from April 12 to late June. We even could postpone it for longer," he said.

Miroshnykov said that the company plans to launch several international flights from Kyiv to Stockholm, Minsk, Chisinau and Dusseldorf in 2014 and some cities in the East – Dushanbe, Ashkhabad and Tashkent and the airline has plans to fly to the Persian Gulf zone.

"We’ve failed to realize a plan to expand our fleet due to the economic situation. In 2014, we plan to have four long-haul Boeing-767 aircraft. Later we're working on new planes and we'll select between Airbus-330 and Boeing-777," he said.

He said that everything will depend on how quickly and peacefully the current political confrontation in Ukraine is settled, as it is affecting the business of the airlines.

"If everything is settled quickly and peacefully, we'll finish 2014 as we did in 2013 – we planned to finish it better, but now it's clear that we won't manage to do this. If everything remains as today the year will be a failure, and we'll have to reduce the number of flights, right up to workforce reductions," Miroshnykov said.

He also said that the new rules in the area of currency regulation introduced by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) could affect the operation of the airline.

"We don't really yet understand what the rules mean, but they will hinder [operations] for sure… Our suppliers do not want to know what problems with foreign currency regulation are in Ukraine and they want us to pay on time," he said.

UIA Executive Vice-President Serhiy Fomenko said that in 2014, trends of introducing additional services for a separate charge would prevail on the market.

"Many carriers say that they should separately work with catering companies. Many companies say that passengers should make decisions themselves how much luggage they want to take. Some want to use the infrastructure of the airport and some don't want to do this," he said.

Fomenko also said that UIA would launch its new Optiоntown project.

"One of the technological providers will offer additional services. For example, you want to fly cheaper and bought a ticket for UAH 3,000, but you want to fly for UAH 2,000, then we'll inform on the availability of seats. On the contrary, if you want to fly urgently and you are ready to pay UAH 3,000 and someone does not want this, we'll call the person and pay them to change their dates, and you'll fly [instead of them]," he said.

Fomenko said that UIA is in talks on the signing of code sharing agreements with airlines flying to the United States and inside the states.

"We're holding negotiations with Asian carriers on the routes from Bangkok to the East. We proposed a code sharing agreement to Uzbekistan several times. If the carrier from Armenia appears we'll also offer this to it," he said.