On May 25th, Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport (IEV) celebrated its 97th birthday. The second largest airport in Ukraine survived even the World War II, but the devastating strike by COVID-19 pandemic came absolutely unexpected.

After prohibition of air travel on March 17th, Boryspil International Airport became the major, if not the only, air gate of Ukraine handling the medical cargos  and evacuated citizens. However, restoration of air traffic in June did make the situation much better, since the airlines serviced at Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport (IEV)  operated virtually empty flights...

One year after COVID crisis, the airport management has regained its optimistic outlook into the future: more and more countries are opening their borders for travelers, and people tired of being caged up at home are grad to use this opportunity. During celebration of Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport (IEV) 97th anniversary, Chairman of the Board of Directors, Mr. Denys Kostrzhevskyi shared with the Ukrainian News his vision of the current situation and future plans.

Would you please tell a bit about future airport reconstruction? 

Currently, Kyiv Municipal State Administration issued to the airport a directive to arrange and conduct airfield reconstruction. According to this directive, during 2021, the Airport must carry out the design activities according to the Terms of Reference at its own expense, and namely: extension of take-off runway with base reinforcement, design of new taxy lanes, rumps, cleaning facilities. After design project approval, in 2022 we are expected to perform and taxi lane and ramp reconstruction works. We plan to accomplish this without suspension of airport routine operations. Although, in 2023 the airport will be temporarily closed for major take-off runway overhaul. Probably, this will include complete dismantling of the existing lane and construct new runway at site with the state-of-art characteristics.

The reconstruction project is fully funded from budget, or you are expected to cover a portion of expenses?

We will carry out design activities at our own expense. However, it doesn’t mean that these are our own money – the funds belong to the municipal budget, but are currently held by the public enterprise. 

How much will it cost? 

The estimate the cost of design work, we estimate at around 15 million for design stage and at least 20-30 million more for working document stage. I mean, around UAH 40-50 million in total. It’s extremely hard to predict the total cost of the reconstruction project now, since we yet have no design and no figures to work with. According to our preliminary estimates, the final amount may vary between UAH 2,5 and 5 million. The more exact figures are currently beyond our knowledge. 

So, before 2023 all flights will take-off and land here as scheduled?

Yes, the airport will continue its operation to the full capacity. We will simply construct new taxi lanes next to the current one without interfering with the airfield routine operations. However, for take-off runway overhaul, we will be forced to temporary suspend our business, since there is no way we can construct the new one and operate the existing one simultaneously due to safety limitation. To put it in crude terms, we just don’t have enough space.

Could you please remind me, what is the usual take-off runway service life? How often does it require reconstruction?

The runway we operate today was reconstructed in 2009-2010. Only 11 years have passed, but unfortunately, the asphalt coating is struggling with the heavy weight of the state-of-art aircrafts and wears off to fast. This the reason, why during this last 11 years, we were forced to temporary crease our operations for 10-11 days in order to perform partial replacement of asphalt top layer. Do some patch work, like with road pavement. Now we expect that the new runway design will rely on cement concrete, which has significantly longer service life than asphalt concrete. If the contractor performs the works with the proper workmanship, then I hope that the new runway will last for 50 years at least.

You’ve mentioned that the airport has to allocated several UAH millions for design activities, but we know that you’ve suffered catastrophic losses after lockdown was imposed? How are ou going to manage this?

Reconstruction will be funded by national or municipal budget. The losses won’t affect the project in any wat, like gas station losses do not affect the government’s plans to repair the highway near its location. The government is funding the infrastructural development projects. This is its basic task. 

If we talk about LLC Master-Avia, which owns the terminal at Kyiv Sikorsky International Airport (IEV) , this company indeed has major debts under its loans taken for terminal construction. But during the last 12 years, and despite all the hard times, LLC Master-Avia continues to pay the interests and repay the loans. Unfortunately, some accounts are still outstanding. The total amount of loan funds raised for terminal construction was around USD 100 million, and currently the company still owes 25 million to the banks.

It’s great that the authorities are funding the infrastructure. But as long as I recall, you’ve recently asked them for UAH 22 million per month to pay the employee salary. What was their reaction that time? Did they promise you anything?

Yes, you’re correct, when the government banned air travel, we needed around UAH 20 million just to maintain the airport in the operational condition despite complete standstill of business. To put it in other words, we flights were ceased, but the airport had to work 24/7 to handle the military and emergency flights. The government basically deprived us of our source of income and left us with all expenses to cover, Therefore, we addressed the authorities at different levels with the request to somehow compensate the losses, we suffered due to the central government directives. We git absolutely nothing.

How would you estimate the losses suffered since March 2020?

It’s not the literal losses, but rather the lost profit. See, in our best year we serviced 2,8 million passengers, while the last year this figure dropped dramatically to only 700 thousand passengers. We’ve lost 2,1 million passengers, who never stepped our runway, never paid us and never generated profit for the airport, Just multiply a standard 10 dollar fee by 2,1 million, and we have USD 21 million of lost profit – it’s more than our current outstanding amounts payable to our creditors.

What is the due date for that loan?

All due dates are long gone.

But their extended the repayment term, aren’t they?

Not yet, but we’re negotiating this. We constantly restructure our debts. This is long and onerous loan, but we home to repay it in 4-5 years.

Provided that there are no new flight bans.

Yes, sure, and provided that we continue to recover to pre-crisis figures as scheduled. 

Since you’ve mentioned recovery, when do you expect to recover to the pre-COVID level?

We’ve already started to recover our business. This year we expect to handle around 1,5 million passengers, which is around 55-60% of our top year figures.  I really hope that the recovery will continue at the same quick pace, and by the moment of business suspension for reconstruction, we will achieve our maximum passenger flow ever.

By Alena Zakhavrova