A. Bogetić Only a few months after announcing their debut scheduled transatlantic flights to New York JFK (scheduled to start on June 7) from Bucharest Henri Coandă International (OTP), HiSky announced that they received a foreign air operator license from the Canadian Transport Agency. The press release published on their website yesterday can be seen here.
Although long-haul operations have been announced only from their OTP hub, HiSky currently operates under two different Air Operator Certificates: one from Moldova and one from Romania. At Chișinău International Airport (RMO), HiSky is one of two base operators along with rival low-cost carrier FlyOne. RMO currently doesn’t have scheduled long-haul flights, although HiSky emphasized in yesterday’s press release that they will rely on connecting passengers from RMO and Cluj International (CLJ) through OTP for their JFK flights. These flights are set to be operated by the carrier’s sole Airbus A330-200.
OTP saw a great deal of transatlantic scheduled flights over the past several decades. Romania’s national carrier, TAROM, operated scheduled transatlantic flight to North America from 1974 to 2003, initially using Il-62Ms and Boeing 707-300s to destinations in the US and Canada. The last TAROM transatlantic scheduled flights ended with their OTP-JFK route being terminated on November 19, 2003; it had been operated with their Airbus A310-300s since the 1990s. Delta Air Lines operated the same scheduled route with its Boeing 767-300ERs from 2007 to 2009. Air Canada Rouge operated scheduled seasonal flights from Montréal–Trudeau International (YUL) to OTP using its own B763ERs from 2018 to 2019. Like with so many routes, the COVID pandemic in 2020 ultimately terminated these operations, not to mention Air Canada Rouge’s long-haul concept altogether. COVID also seems to be the reason why TAROM’s plan to restore scheduled transatlantic flights in 2020 never materialized–One Mile At A Time wrote that they may had sought a wet lease arrangement to perform the flights due to their lack of widebody equipment. As things stand, HiSky is set to become OTP’s (and Romania’s) sole domestic widebody and long-haul air carrier for the time being.
