UTair Airlines, Russia, continues flight operation program to Khujand, Tajikistan, in the same volume, at the moment the company has not received an official notification of the ban on flights to this city, the TASS News Agency, Russia, reported referring to the Press Service of this Air Company.

"To date, UTair has not received official instructions on the prohibition of flights to Khujand. The flight program for this direction is carried out according to the previously approved schedule, for the next few days all tickets were sold," the company said.

Currently, UTair performs five flights to Khujand in a week: one flight from Surgut and two flights from Tyumen and Nizhnevartovsk.

Earlier media reported that the Tajik aviation authorities will impose restrictions on UTair flights from April 6 from 10:30 am local time. The measure concerns three UTair flights to Khujand. This should be a response to the Russian authorities' restrictions on the Somon Air airline. It is also planned to introduce a similar ban, concerning four flights of "Ural Airlines" in Dushanbe, CAAN Asia reported.

Russian Transport Ministry from 08:30 am Moscowtime on April 3 introduced a ban to operate a number of flights by Somon Air, Tajikistan, to Russia. Restrict the airline’s flights, the ministry decided in response to the disagreement of Tajik aviation authorities to agree in full the flights of Yamal from Zhukovsky outside Moscow.

The dispute over the status of Zhukovsky

Yamal is the second designated carrier on flights from Zhukovsky to Tajikistan. Earlier, Yamal applied for flights from Zhukovsky to Dushanbe (four flights a week) and Khujand (three flights a week).

The flights were to be launched at the end of 2016, but Tajikistan did not agree to Yamal flights from Zhukovsky, citing a violation of parity in terms of the number of carriers on both sides (by that time the Ural Airlines had already flown from Zhukovsky, and Tajikistan's Somon Air - to Moscow's Domodedovo).

Tajikistan does not recognize Zhukovsky’s ownership of regional airports, and parity by the number of carriers exists only for flights and arrivals to the airports of the Moscow air hub. According to Russian legislation, Zhukovsky was referred to Moscowsuburbs. As a result, the parties even limited air traffic.

After another round of talks earlier this year, the parties agreed that Yamal could start flights from Zhukovsky to Dushanbe with the onset of the summer season of IATA (which began on March 26). However, at the end of March, Tajikistanconfirmed only 50% of the declared flights to Yamal - only two flights to each city weekly.