History
On 22 June 1959, the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR ordered the establishment of regular civil air traffic to the then military airfield near Boryspil. On 7 July 1959 the new airport (named Kyiv-Tsentralnyi) received its first scheduled flight. It was Aeroflot's Tupolev Tu-104 en route from Moscow, carrying 100 passengers and about 3,500 pounds (1,600 kg) of cargo aboard. The first routes served were Moscow–Kiev–Moscow and Leningrad–Kyiv–Leningrad.
In November 1960, the first permanent air group, consisting of Tu-104 and Antonov An-10 planes, was assigned to the airport. Until then the airport had been served only by aircraft based in Moscow and other cities of the Soviet Union. A new passenger terminal of Boryspil airport was opened in 1965. Later that year, an automatic landing assistance system was installed in the airport.
In 1963, the Ukrainian Territorial Administration of Civil Aviation formed its Boryspil subdivision consisting of the airport and its air group. The air group grew significantly in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1974 it consisted of four fleets of turbojet aircraft (Tu-104 planes), turbofan aircraft (Tu-134, Tu-154 planes) and two fleets of turboprop aircraft (Ilyushin Il-18 planes).
Towards the final decades of the Cold War, the Soviet Air Force maintained a presence at the airport with 1 VTAP (1st Military Aviation Transportation Regiment) flying Ilyushin Il-76 cargo jets.
By the 1980s, Boryspil airport had begun receiving limited international flights. Additional passenger services and customs/border control groups were established for that purpose. However, ordinary Soviet citizens were not allowed to depart abroad from Kiev, instead being restricted to flying only from Moscow airports.
In the late 1980s, Mikheil Saakashvili, the current President of Georgia, served his conscript service in the Soviet border guard's Boryspil Separate Group that was maintaining border control in the airport.
In 1993, the Ministry of Transportation of the newly-independent Ukraine reorganized the airport into the Boryspil State International Airport and created a local subdivision of Air Ukraine to serve it. The airport was opened for any passengers and flights. The number of air- and passenger traffic has been growing ever since.
Early in the 2000s, Boryspil became a hub airport serving not only destined but also transit flights of foreign airlines. The airport's development strategy stresses the hub role since domestic passenger demand is growing insufficiently compared to the possible transit traffic.
In 2001, a new runway was completed and the airport carried 1.5 million passengers. The airport is certified for ILS CAT III A approaches.
In 2002 the airport was certified under the ISO 9001 quality management system.
It is one of Eastern Europe's largest airports with over six million passengers travelling in 2008. The Airport consistently accounted for between 60% and 70% of Ukraine’s air travel demand, and despite a drop of 13% in 2009 it handled 5.8 million passengers, more than it handled in 2007.
The airport managed to survive the 2012 European cold wave without major flight delays or cancellations.
Read more about this topic: Boryspil International Airport
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