The taxi scandal led to the resignation of director of the Boryspil International Airport

Taxi drivers tricked the general director of Boryspil into his dismissal

Photo: Konstantin Melnitsky

General Director of Boryspil airport has resigned, the airport press service informed Capital. “On September 18 General Director of the Boryspil Airport Serhiy Hombolevskiy made a decision on premature severing of his labor contract,” it is said in the report. He held this position from March 31, 2014. Overall, Hombolevskiy worked at the airport in different positions for 15 years.

Unsatisfied officials

The position of the general director of Boryspil was seriously rocked on Wednesday. The director of one of the airlines, who requested anonymity, said that at the meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers one of the ministers expressed his dissatisfaction with the taxi services at Boryspil. Apparently, one taxi driver demanded a fare UAH 130 more than for the same ride a week earlier. His colleagues are also not satisfied with the airport. That same day information about an investigation according to which the taxi company Avto-Ukraina appeared at the airport in place of the airport’s official taxi company – Sky Taxi – without any tender being held was published in the mass media. Moreover, taxi drivers of the monopoly working in place of Sky Taxi, which was shut down at the end of April due to losses, hiked their tariffs 1.5-2 times, reads the investigation report.

Premier Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk instructed Minister of Infrastructure Maxim Burbak check into observance of the law in the tender for rendering taxi services at Boryspil and also determine the correspondence of the position of the airport director, information of the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers published on its official site on late night Wednesday it reads.

Burbak says a decision on the fate of the general director of Boryspil will be made based on the results of the review of the work of the Sky Taxi company.

Fight for control

Every large airline is interested that the airport be managed by an individual loyal them. “For example, if the liberalization of the air space with the European Union continues, the airport could decide against issuing a slot of an unfavored airline or give a slot with an extremely inconvenient time,” explained member of the supervisory council of the Ukrainian Logistics Association Artur Vynyukov-Proshchenko. He said Ukraine International Airlines and Atlasjet Ukraine need to have “their own man” more than others. As Capital wrote earlier, there is a fight between the two airlines over the number of destinations. The conflict has moved to the stage of court litigation.Besides that, the TAV company, which manages a competitor of Boryspil – the Ataturk Istanbul International Airport, is also interested in freezing the development of the Ukrainian airport.

In order to survive the current deep crisis, the industry needs consolidation of the airlines and airports in one individual, noted Director of Friendly Avia Support consulting company Oleksandr Lanetskiy. At the moment, the attempt to consolidate the airline industry is not exactly healthy, he concluded.

Potential candidates

It highly likely that Yevhen Dykhne will be appointed as Hombolovskiy’s replacement, a high-standing source in the Cabinet of Ministers presumes. “Seemingly the issue has been resolved, but there has not been any directive, the source specified. He said if a directive is signed, then the presentation of the new manager may take place on September 19.

Up until recently Dykhne was engaged in the organization of passenger transportations at UkrZaliznytsia. Prior to that, he worked together with current General Director of Atlasjet Ukraine Serhiy Podhorotskiy at the Lviv Airlines company. Podhoretskiy confirmed that he worked with the potential general director of Boryspil in 2007-2008. However, an attempt to connect this possible appointment with the lobbying by Atlasjet Ukraine is “completely ludicrous”, he says.

Manager of an airline who requested anonymity named Deputy General Director of Boryspil Borys Shakhsuvarov, who is considered a protégé of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, as another candidate of the position of director of Boryspil.