After prolonged and escalating civil unrest in the eastern and south-eastern regions of Ukraine, the Ukrainian state aviation administration has moved to indefinitely suspend the operations of three major airports located with these regions. The airports include Kharkov International Airport, Dnipropetrovsk International Airport and Zaporozhye International Airport. These airport closures follow the closure of Donetsk Sergey Prokofiev International Airport in May 2014, after pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops entered a large-scale conflict over gaining control of the airport facility.

In early December, the newly appointed state-owned parent company of MASwings, Khazanah, announced that the airline would be reorganized and repositioned as a Low-Cost Carrier. The airline currently acts as a regional feeder airline for the Malaysia Airlines mainline operation. Malaysia Airlines, which suffered two fatal accidents in 2014, was recently re-acquired by the state in an attempt to restructure the airline and return it to profitability. As a part of this restructuring process, it has been noted that MASwings will be re-launched as an independent budget carrier. This process is reportedly planned to commence some time in 2015.

The European Union has released its latest review of the EU list of banned carriers. The list was established to assist European Union member states in identifying the level of oversight undertaken by a country’s civil aviation regulator and ensuring that the airlines under its oversight, adhere to internationally recognised safety standards. There have been no major amendments to the list, with the exception of all Libyan airlines, which have now been placed on the ban list due to the recent civil conflict and political unrest within Libya. As a consequence, all Libyan airlines are now banned from operating within European airspace until the regulator, or individual airlines, can demonstrate that they adhere to internationally recognised safety standards.