Ukraine’s largest airport prepares to reopen after three-year closure

Boryspil International Airport (KBP) in Kyiv, Ukraine, is set to resume operations within a month once it is deemed safe, according to the airport’s Director of Commercial and Strategy, Sergiy Khyzhnyak. 

Khyzhnyak made the announcement during the Routes Europe 2025 conference in Seville, Spain, on April 8, 2025, as reported by Aviation Week. 

During the conference Khyzhnyak noted that resuming operations after three years of airspace closure, along with two prior years of pandemic disruptions, will take “a lot of work.” However, the airport has been maintained in a state of readiness for this eventuality. 

“I think the main challenge we have is uncertainty,” Khyzhnyak told the conference attendees during a panel session. “We did not know how long we had to prepare our resilience plan for. […] Plans, which were designed to last a couple of weeks, have now obviously transformed into a long-term resilience plan.” 

In March 2025, Latvian airline airBaltic sent a team to Ukraine to meet with key partners and explore what was needed to restart flights from the country. airBaltic also announced plans to bring back routes to Kyiv and Lviv as soon as it is safe to do so. Looking ahead, the airline aims to boost regional connections by adding direct flights from Kyiv to the three Baltic capitals, Tallinn, Vilnius, and its home base Riga. 

“We had a full tour of the [Boryspil International] Airport, both airside and landside, and it looks in perfect shape,” Mantas Vrubliauskas, the VP of Network Development at airBaltic said at the conference. “If you didn’t know there was a war, you would think that it was just COVID.” 

Boryspil International Airport, the largest airport in Ukraine, used to handle around 65% of the country’s passenger air traffic, including most intercontinental and international flights. It has been closed since the early hours of February 24, 2022, when Russian forces launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Boryspil was among the first targets struck during the initial wave of attacks, leading to an immediate suspension of all commercial operations. 

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Since then, airport employees have been working with reduced salaries, according to Aviation Week. However, they have maintained their qualifications, and about 20% of the staff are on duty at the airport at any time. 

On March 17, 2025, Lviv’s international airport, located in the Lviv Oblast region in western Ukraine, publicly stated an intention to reopen to regular commercial passenger services in “late Spring” of 2025. According to the airport operator, five to seven airlines have already expressed readiness to resume flights within a month of the airport reopening. 

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