Low-cost carrier Wizz Air evacuated its first of four planes from Ukraine on September 13. Flightradar24 and FlightAware online radars recorded the flight.
Users of the services observed the appearance of an Airbus A320 airliner with registration HA-LWS at the Ukrainian-Polish border and subsequent landing at the Polish Katowice airport. Since February 23, this plane has been at the Lviv airport.
The pilots did not turn on the signal transmitter before crossing the Ukrainian border. This is usually done for security reasons so that the movement of the aircraft cannot be recorded using open sources.
Since the beginning of the new phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war, this is already the second special operation to evacuate a civilian plane from Ukraine. On April 2, the pilots flew a small regional ATR-72 plane of the Ukrainian airline “Windrose” from Lviv to Warsaw.
As of now, three more Wizz Air planes remain in Ukraine. These are Airbus A320 airliners with registrations HA-LPM, HA-LPJ, and HA-LWY. Before the war, they were based at Kyiv airport (Zhulyany).
The evacuation of a civilian plane from Lviv took place against the background of statements by the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine about the readiness of the Lviv airport to receive planes.
According to the Minister of Infrastructure Oleksandr Kubrakov, it will take up to two weeks to bring the airport to technical readiness. However, the minister emphasized, that this can be done only if Ukraine receives guaranteed security and guarantees, first of all, from international partners. As an example, he cited the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed unblocking the export of grain by ships through Ukrainian seaports.