The Zaporizhia airport handled 348,400 passengers in 2017, which is 27% more than the number it handled in 2016. These figures allowed the Zaporizhia airport to overtake its closest competitor, the Dnipropetrovsk airport, the CFTS reports.
"We finished 2017 well. In total, we handled 348,400 passengers. This represents a 27% increase compared with the number of passengers we handled in 2016," the airport’s Director Viktor Biskupskyi said in comments to the CFTS.
The Zaporizhia airport did not receive flights between late April and early May because of runway repairs. This did not prevent the airport from increasing its passenger volume. According to Biskupskyi, flights to several new destinations were launched from the Zaporizhia airport in 2017, including Tel Aviv (Israel), Batumi (Georgia), Burgas (Bulgaria), Tivat (Montenegro), and Monastir (Tunisia).
The volume of passenger traffic through the Zaporizhia airport has increased in the past three years: by about 70% in 2015 and 115% in 2016. At the same time, the volume of passenger traffic through the Dnipropetrovsk airport, which is located 90 kilometers from Zaporizhia, has fallen in the past three years: from 346,000 in 2015 to 276,900 in 2017.
As the CFTS reported, a working group from the Ministry of Infrastructure will visit Dnipro in February to assess the potential for construction of a new terminal and runway.
The airport terminal is now privately owned while the runway is state owned.
Meanwhile, construction machinery and building materials were delivered to the site of construction of a new passenger terminal at the Zaporizhia airport in mid-December 2017.
