Will airplanes return to the skies of Ukraine? Is it realistic to resume flights in 2025 and which airport has the best chance

Ukraine is unlikely to resume passenger airplane flights from Kyiv until the end of 2025. Lviv airport has a better chance, as it will be easier to obtain flight insurance. But in any case, the decision has not yet been made, and even if the "green light" is given, it will take at least 45 days for Lviv to actually return to work, and about two months for Boryspil.

Government sources told Forbes about this."As soon as we have a decision, we will be able to resume flights from Lviv in 45 days," said a person familiar with the negotiations on the resumption of passenger flights.

It is not yet known when the decision might be approved."No timeframe has been set," said a source in one of the aviation agencies. According to him, it depends on many factors: in particular, how the planes will receive insurance, whether the sky will be sufficiently protected, etc.

Crispin Ellison, Senior Partner at Marsh McLennan, said at the 10th Kyiv International Economic Forum (KIEF) on November 7 that Ukraine could resume passenger flights by the end of January 2025. "I think if we are lucky, in January we will have five or six airlines that want to fly... The initial focus is Lviv. It's a seven-minute flight from Poland," he said.

Ellison is confident that it will be much easier to provide insurance mechanisms for flights from Lviv airport than from Kyiv, precisely because of its proximity to EU airspace."Lviv is much safer than Tel Aviv," Ellison said.

According to the sources, the President's Office and the Cabinet of Ministers are still primarily focused on the decommissioning of Boryspil."If we launch Lviv first, the chances that our partners will agree to Boryspil before the end of martial law are slim," said one government official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

As Bohdan Dolintse, an aviation expert and member of the Public Council of the State Aviation Service, explained, at least five conditions need to be met to launch one airport. These are:

• guarantees from the military on flight safety;
• lifting the NOTAM ban on the use of Ukrainian airspace or at least limiting this ban to certain routes;
• bringing the infrastructure to the proper state, availability of personnel trained to respond quickly to military threats, which will be confirmed by certificates from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA);
• the readiness of specific carriers to fly.

By the way, several Northern European airlines have already expressed their interest in starting flights from Ukraine as soon as possible, a government source said. "They are negotiating with their governments to get additional safeguards," he said but declined to name specific airlines.

In Ukraine, even before the outbreak of a full-scale war, some insurance companies initiated the cancellation of flights to Ukraine due to news that Russia was preparing an invasion. And that was before the missile attacks. Now it will be even more difficult to get insurance, Volodymyr Kreidenko, deputy chairman of the parliamentary committee on transport and infrastructure, explained to OBOZ.UA.

Earlier, the Ministry of Communities and Territories Development, with the support of the US Embassy, presented a roadmap for opening Ukraine's airspace under martial law. "During the war, our strategic task is to preserve aviation infrastructure and qualified personnel so that when the time comes, we can resume civilian flights as quickly as possible," the Ministry said at the time.

As reported by OBOZ.UA, according to Dolintse, Russian Shakhtys do not pose a threat to civilian aircraft in the air due to their height restrictions, but they can be dangerous for airports. A complete ban on flights remains in place and only limited opportunities for resuming flights are being considered with the strengthening of air defense, the expert emphasized.

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