Odesa region plans to restore Izmail airport by 2027

The Odesa Regional Council plans to reopen the Izmail airport, which has been out of service for 15 years, by 2027. This will require half a billion hryvnias.

This became known from the Strategy for the Restoration and Development of Odesa Region for 2025-2027 published on the regional council's website.

The project to restore the idle air port involves the development of feasibility studies, raising financial resources, building a new terminal and modernizing the runway, training aviation personnel, cooperating with border guards and aviation companies, certification, and purchasing special equipment.

The project partners are the Odesa Regional State Administration, Izmail Airport, the State Border Guard Service, airlines, pilot schools, and international organizations. It is planned to raise UAH 90 million for the first part of the project in 2025, another UAH 235.9 million in 2026, and another UAH 200 million in 2027. The document emphasizes that the success of the project depends on timely funding from the state budget and international funds.

It is expected that if the reconstruction is successfully completed, three flights from low-cost airlines such as A320 or B737-800 will be launched daily and the airport's capacity will be up to 360 thousand passengers per year. This will create up to 500 new jobs.

In March 2021, as part of a working visit to Izmail by the head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, Serhiy Hrynevetskyi, his advisor Yuriy Dimchoglo presented a strategy for the restoration and development of air transportation through the Izmail Airport Municipal Enterprise for 2021-2024. According to the document, to resume the operation of the Izmail airport, it is necessary to implement three stages of the project according to the European control standards with a total cost of UAH 2.05 billion. The first stage is to restore certification with an international pass. The activities of this stage, which was estimated to cost UAH 450 million, were planned to be implemented by 2023.

In April 2020, the Parliament passed a law amending the State Budget of Ukraine for 2020, which resulted in the failure of theIzmail Airport utility company to receive a subvention of UAH 70 million. In the summer of 2019, Izmail Airport began a major overhaul of the airport, which was scheduled to be completed last year. Last fall, the airport received a land plot of almost 0.6 hectares for permanent use. In March 2020, the Odesa Regional Council announced a tender to select a contractor to improve the territory of the Izmail Airport.

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