DHL Express views the Boryspil airport as an alternative to its hubs in Moscow and Istanbul.
Vadim Sidoruk, a regional manager at DHL Express, announced this this during the "The Aviation Industry after the Covid-19 Pandemic: Impact on Airports, Airlines and People" online forum, the CFTS portal reports.
According to him, the company continues to view the Boryspil airport as its potential hub for the Caucasus and Central Asia region. "For this, it is necessary for normal passenger flights to resume and for the airport to have a new cargo terminal," Sidoruk said.
“The Boryspil airport was a hub airport before the pandemic. Therefore, it would be ideal for us to combine its hub model with our network because transit flights would cover all the destinations we need – Almaty, Yerevan, Tbilisi, and Baku. For these destinations, we would like the Boryspil airport to become an alternative to our hubs in Istanbul and Moscow," he said.
The idea of building a cargo terminal at the Boryspil airport has been under discussion for a long time, and the airport once sought DHL’s support in building it. The airport’s General Director Pavlo Riabikin said in December 2016 that a DHL or TNT terminal could be built at the airport. According to him, the place and opportunities for such a facility exist, but it is necessary to first reach agreement with the provider of cargo traffic. "You cannot just build a terminal and then begin searching for people who want to fly to it. This is the main problem. Firstly, a specialized investor that will not only build the terminal, but also provide it with cargo traffic, is needed. Therefore, I will negotiate with major cargo operators, primarily DHL, UPS, or TNT," Riabikin said at the time.
The European Business Association stated in July 2020 that construction of a new cargo terminal at the Boryspil airport could begin this autumn. However, the Boryspil airport’s Commercial Director Heorhii Zubko has said that all infrastructure projects at the airport are currently suspended due to the absence of a financial plan for 2020 and the anti-coronavirus quarantine.
