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By private jet from Minsk to Moscow: How the former prime minister’s son-in-law built an aviation business

The Belarusian airline BySky has released its financial figures for the past year. Compared to 2024, revenue increased three and a half times, reaching 27 million Belarusian rubles. Net profit doubled to almost 11 million rubles. BySky Airlines’ head, Dzmitry Kuchynski, declined to comment on financial figures over the phone.

We want to thank the OCCRP ID team for their help in preparing this piece

BySky Airlines is the only private business jet operator in Belarus. The firm appeared in 2017. Its founder is the joint-stock company Investitsionnoye Finansirovanie. The company has built a business aviation centre at Minsk National Airport as part of an agreement with the Belarusian authorities.

 

Siarhei Batsianouski is the driving force behind the aviation business. Thanks to data provided by CyberPartisans, we confirmed that he is the son-in-law of former Belarusian Prime Minister Sergey Ling, who served from 1997 to 2000.

 

BOTENKOV

Businessman Siarhei Batsianouski (on the right) and former Belaeronavigatsiya head Leanid Churo. Source: ban.by

Siarhei Batsianouski is involved in the arms trade. He was formerly the head of the Belarusian representative office of the Russian joint-stock company, Oboronitelnye Sistemy. The holding company specialised in producing, supplying, repairing and maintaining Pechora-2M anti-aircraft missile systems, Feniks electro-optical tactical control radars, P-18 radar locator and Kama-N radar locator.

 

Batsianouski currently heads the Belarusian military enterprise OKB-TSP. It is under EU and US sanctions. Aleksandr Lukashenko visited the enterprise, where he was shown the upgraded Buk-MB2 anti-aircraft missile system. As we previously reported, OKB TSP supplied various components to Russian military enterprises involved in the war against Ukraine.

According to aviation services, BySky Airlines currently has four aircraft in its fleet: two Pilatus PC-12s and two Hawker 850XP/900XP aircraft. The company bought Pilatus PC-12 aircraft at a factory in Switzerland. The Hawker 850XP business jet was acquired from the Egyptian operator Alkan Air and the Hawker 900XP – from the Kazakh operator FlyJet KZ.

 

Hawker 850XP

Hawker 850XP business jet. Source: jetphotos.com

 

According to Flightradar24, BySky mainly operates its flights within the CIS. The airline flew to Minsk, Brest, Orsha, Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kazan, Ufa, Sochi, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Mineralnye Vody, Astana, Baku, Kutaisi, Tbilisi, Samarkand, Yerevan, Tel Aviv and Cairo, among other destinations. The Hawker 850XP business jet was most often used for flights. Last year, it flew about 80 flights, and this year – about 50.

 

BySky’s clients are wealthy people. For instance, Russian singer Stas Mikhailov flew to the Slavianski Bazaar in Vitsebsk on a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft.

 

The BySky website is currently down. We contacted the company, posing as customers, to find out the current transport prices. One-person flights on a Hawker 850XP cost 25,000 euros from Minsk to Moscow and 31,800 euros from Minsk to St. Petersburg. An additional 1,100 euros is charged for each extra passenger.

 

One-person flights on a Pilatus PC12 aircraft from Minsk to Moscow cost 20,430 euros, and from Minsk to St. Petersburg – 28,380 euros. The cost to add each extra passenger on the St. Petersburg route is 910 euros, and on the Moscow route is 1,020 euros.

 

Both planes have a capacity of up to eight passengers.