20.10.2023 – Translated from Ukrainian via Google and OFP
Boryspil International Airport (Kyiv) is ready to launch passenger flights just a month after the end of the war. To achieve this, the airport retained most of its staff and entered into agreements with airlines.
The general director of Boryspil, Alexey Dubrevsky, told Politico about this. “We don’t want to spend a year or two thinking: “What to do after the war?” We are doing everything necessary to start flying as soon as possible. We managed to eliminate all the damage. We are ready to start work as soon as possible,” said Dubrevsky.
So, the airport kept its employees on staff and continues to pay them two-thirds of their salaries. Work shifts alternate. This is due to the need for all employees’ aviation certificates to remain valid.
Training of people, salaries and utility bills cost the airport 3.2 million euros (123.7 million UAH) per month. In addition, Boryspil had to spend 1.8 million euros (69.6 million UAH) to restore damaged infrastructure.
“It’s not cheap… We are eating through what we earned in 2021 ,” Dubrevsky said. Therefore, the airport has already turned to EU officials and banking institutions for financial support. In addition, after Ukraine joins the European Union, Boryspil will need to be modernized, and this will cost another 420 million euros (about 16.2 billion UAH).
According to the UN , about three quarters of the approximately 8 million Ukrainian refugees plan to return home after the end of the war. “We have a new market niche that didn’t exist before: visiting friends and relatives,” Dubrevsky said.
He also recalled that the largest low-cost airlines have already announced their readiness to resume flights in Ukraine as soon as possible after the end of the war. Accordingly, the country’s airports should also be prepared for this .
The director of Boryspil also noted that an increase in the number of cargo flights is expected , which will be associated with the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. He also forecasts the realization of pent-up tourism demand . “We assume that after the war, many people from the international community will come to Ukraine to see our heroes with their own eyes, shake their hands and see the country of heroes who so courageously defended our European values,” he said.
But the picture is not the same throughout Ukraine. According to Dubrevsky, only three of the country’s 13 airports are in good condition : Kyiv, Lviv and Odessa. The air harbors of Kherson, Mariupol and Dnieper were the most affected. Their restoration will take at least 5-7 years.
Boryspil is the largest airport in Ukraine, which served 9 million passengers in 2021. Before the coronavirus pandemic, passenger traffic was even higher – about 12 million passengers per year. The airport, like all other airports in the country, was closed on February 24, 2022. At the beginning of the full-scale war, Boryspil was hit twice by Russian attacks.
At the same time, as stated by the speaker of the Air Force of the Ukrainian Armed Forces Yuriy Ignat, not a single airport in Ukraine will be opened in the near future. The only condition for this will be that the military has all the necessary means to protect the sky.
Ignat explained that currently all Ukrainian airfields are “operational.” “”Not airports, but airfields – period. And they are all subordinate to the military,” he noted.
As OBOZ.UA reported, earlier in Ukraine there was talk about the possible start of operation of some airports. We figured out how real this is.
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