Kyiv Airport Seeking To Extend Its Runway By 550 Meters

The Kyiv airport has announced plans to extend its runway by 550 meters.

The head of the airport’s board of directors, Denys Kostrzhevskyi, announced this in an interview with the Interfax Ukraine news agency, the CFTS portal reports.

“The Kyiv airport has a runway with a length of 2,350 meters. It is located in the central part of the city. Accordingly, its approach systems allow aircraft to land and take off under certain weather conditions. To be able to handle aircraft in any weather conditions and handle larger aircraft, the Kyiv airport needs to increase the category of its airfield," Kostrzhevskyi said.

According to him, a master plan for reconstruction of the airfield, which has five different options, has been developed. Each of them provides for extension of the runway by 550 meters and improvement in the performance of the approach systems (approach lighting systems and radio navigation equipment). The estimated cost of these works ranges from EUR 80 million to EUR 100 million.

"The city needs to solve two problems. The first is to allocate land and the second is to either allocate or raise money. There are different ways to raise money: you can take a loan or hold a concession tender. If the city decides to grant a concession on its operation, then the Master Avia airport operating company will, of course participate in the competition,” he said.

According to him, loans will probably be obtained if is no such decision is made. “Perhaps funding will be provided from the city budget or it will be leased out with an obligation to invest. We do not know this,” Kostrzhevskyi said.

The Kyiv airport has requested allocation of 12 hectares of land at both ends of the runway.

As the CFTS portal reported, the relevant documents were submitted to the city authorities for approval more than one month ago. In May of year, the project for extension of the Kyiv airport’s runway is intended for implementation over a period of 3-5 years. "Documents for allotment of additional land at the ends of the runway are currently at the Kyiv city administration. The airport plans to somehow extend the runway in the next 3-5 years to enable it to receive Airbus A321 aircraft without restrictions," Kostrzhevskyi said in comments to the CFTS portal.

Kostrzhevskyi said at the time that the airport wanted to extend the runway by 600 meters.