Kyiv Zhuliany International Airport intends to serve 2.6 million passengers in 2019, which is more than 7% less than in 2018, Denys Kostrzhevsky, the head of the airport’s board of directors, has said. “I won’t say that we have a catastrophic decline in growth rates. Compared to last year, when we transported almost 2.8 million people, this year we expect to service 2.6 million passengers. That is, the decrease in passenger traffic will be about 8%. I even won’t call it a fall, it’s an adjustment. In 2018, Kyiv airport showed an explosive growth – we grew by 52% compared to 2017. This year there will be a drop in passenger traffic. This is not a catastrophic drop,” he said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.
At the same time, he noted that in 2020 passenger traffic growth is expected.
“The airline’s plans for scheduled flights are quite conservative and long-term. At present, we already know the airline’s plans for spring-summer navigation, until October 2020,” he added.
According to forecasts announced at the international conference Global Airport Development in Dublin (Ireland), in the medium term the growth rate of passenger traffic in the world will be 5-8% per year.
“In Ukraine, the market is underestimated and underdeveloped due to low purchasing power … We have been slowing down for a long time and now we must catch up with the world figures for the number of flying citizens per capita. All this is closely connected with state policy. If the economic and political situation in the country allow saying that business and the economy are developing steadily, household incomes are growing, respectively, and aviation growth will be large,” he said.
