Local Georgian carrier, AirZena Georgian Airways, has these past four weeks introduced three new regional destinations to its route network from Tbilisi International Airport. The carrier has added links from the Georgian capital to the Russian city of St Petersburg, the Armenian capital Yerevan and most recently the Ukrainian Black Sea destination of Odessa.

Established in September 1994 under the AirZena brand, the carrier initially provided charter flights to the United Arab Emirates, Italy, China, Egypt, India, Syria and regular scheduled flights to Austria. It was granted national carrier status in November 1999 and latterly the Georgian Airways title has been added.

The three new routes have seen seven weekly flights being added to its network and builds upon a new link from the Georgian capital to the Russian city of Samara and seasonal services to Paris that were introduced earlier this year.

The airline added a twice weekly link to St Petersburg from June 9, 2015 using a Boeing 737, while a four times weekly service to Yerevan, resurrecting a former a route from the Georgian capital, was introduced on June 29, 2015 and is being flown by a 50-seat Bombardier CRJ200. The weekly connection to Odessa, again operated using a CRJ200, was launched just last week on July 1, 2015.

The link to Yerevan marks AirZena’s return to a market it first served in summer 2013 having been previously flown by former Armenian carrier Armavia on a winter-only basis. The Tbilisi – Odessa city pair will also be flown by Ukrainian carrier Dniproavia from this month, while AirZena will operate alongside Ural Airlines on the St Petersburg route. The latter will introduce its own twice weekly A320 flights in this market from July 14, 2015 as part of a growth in of links between Russia and Georgia which will see it also add twice weekly flights between Moscow and Batumi from July 10, 2015.