The Centre for Transport Strategies on Jan. 30 published an infographic showing that 20.5 million people traveled trough Ukrainian airports in 2018, a 24.5 percent increase compared to 2017, which was itself a record year.
Kyiv leads the way with over 15.4 million passengers in 2018, or 75 percent of total air traffic in Ukraine. Boryspil International Airport, the country’s main hub situated 18 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, served 12 million passengers by mid-December, while Kyiv International Airport (Zhuliany) saw a 51 percent increase in passengers, with over 2.8 million travelers passing through the airport.
Kyiv is also on pace in becoming an important transfer hub, with 3.5 million passengers using the capital as a stopover in 2018.
Airports in Odesa and Lviv, served more than a million passengers each in 2018, while the airport in Kharkiv came just short of the 1 million mark.
Elsewhere, 11 Ukrainian airports saw an double digit growth in passengers. Only the Kryvyi Rih airport saw a decrease in passenger numbers in 2018.
The same year, Ukraine had 16 functional airports, adding two new air hubs, in Mykolaiv and Poltava.
In 2019, the airport in Uzhorod, a city 750 kilometers west of Kyiv, is expected to begin full operation.
The airport’s proximity to the Slovakian border, where planes must use Slovakian airspace for takeoffs and landings, made it impossible to use the air hub without a special treaty. The treaty is expected to be signed in early 2019, opening an additional Ukrainian air hub for potential newcomers.
The Ukrainian aviation industry has been booming since the 2014 economic slump, caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In 2017, the country was able to surpass the pre-war figures. The total number of passengers in the past five years nearly doubled, from 10.8 to 20.5 million people.
The increase is primarily due to the simplification of border crossing procedures for Ukrainians, with Ukraine receiving a visa-free regime with the European Union in 2017, and as a result an increasing amount of new air companies entering the Ukrainian market, with seven new airlines and 30 flights began operation in 2018.
