From 2024, a new Georgian national airline - Air Iveria plans to operate. The airline will start operating with 3 or 4 aircraft, and in the future Air Iveria's crew will at least triple.

On March 23, 2023, an exclusive cooperation agreement was signed between Air Iveria and Airbus. As the founders of the airline, Irakli Giorgobiani and Tengiz Tkeshelashvili, said in an interview with Commersant, Air Iveria and Airbus will jointly prepare the operating model and sustainable development plan of the new Georgian airline.

Tengiz Tkeshelashvili has been working for more than 23 years in various international companies of 8 countries, including McKinsey & Company, Speedinvest, Groupon and Qatar Wealth Fund.

Irakli Giorgobiani has more than 20 years of work experience in banking, business consulting, management of large infrastructure projects, and public and private sectors. He has worked at the Bank of Georgia, BMI Partners and international company Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios SA.

Commersant asked the founders of the new Georgian airline about the company’s visions and plans for the future.


Why did you decide to carry out such a challenging  project?

Tengiz Tkeshelashvili, co-founder of Air Iveria: This is my dream for the last 20 years. I never wanted to work in a field I do not like. As I said, this is my dream job, I want Georgia to have its own strong airline to develop the entire ecosystem of the industry, including the aviation- related fields such as tourism, airports, shipping, etc. B y 2030, Air Iveria wil l fill the Georgia n budget with about $1 billion annually.

Irakli Giorgobiani, co-founder of Air Iveria: For me, this project is also   beyond   that of  making   money , this project aims at boosting the development of the country's trade and cultural ties, exports and foreign investment. Strong airlines are catalysts for creating high-paying jobs a s well as developing tourism, hospitality, airports, logistics sector.  All this provides the country’ s long-term and sustainable development. This is a large-scale national project, it’s goal it to creat e the country’s largest national company.

How did your collaboration with Airbus start?

Successful realization of our project requires the industry’s best practices, evaluating and analyzing market conditions and trends, establishing relationships with important industry players, and forming beneficial partnerships. For this purpose, we have chosen Airbus as a partner company that shares our vision, experience and reputation.

It’s worth mentioing that Airbus, just like us, considers Georgia as the main transit hub between Europe and Asia due to its geographical location believing that the country's airlines must occupy at least 50-60% of the market share that is quite natural for the national airlines. Unfortunately, currently the share of Georgian airlines does not exceed 6-8% that we consider to be a missed opportunity for tourism development and turning the country into a transit hub.

You’ ve mentioned Georgia as a hub, does this mean that the air carrier will operate transit flights?

Yes, definitely, a significant share of the turnover of the Georgian airlines will fall on transit - transit from Asia and the Middle East to Europe and vice versa. Georgia has a unique location for this.

What are the main customer groups served by your company and what will be the prices?

First of all, I want to say that our services will be high quality and prices will be adequate to it. In any case, the customer prefers our services over those of competitors

We’ll have a good loyalty program that means that a loyal customer will fly at very favorable prices.