Eleven flights heading to Boryspil International Airport near Kyiv on the night of Dec. 9 had to be redirected to the airports of Kharkiv and Odesa, and to Kyiv International Airport (Zhulyany), and at least three flights were canceled due to heavy fog and an accident on a runway.
A plane belonging to Belavia Belarusian Airlines, arriving in Boryspil Airport at 6:30 p.m. from Minsk, crashed the runway lights when taxiing after the landing, according to the airport’s director Pavlo Ryabikin quoted by Vesti newspaper. No victims were reported. According to Ryabikin, only part of the plane’s fuselage’s skin got damaged.
It complicated the traffic in the airport, with the staff closing off one of the airport’s two runways to clear off the lights’ debris. The runway was open later that night.
Following it, reports appeared in the Ukrainian media that a plane had a “rough landing” or even crashed during landing in Boryspil Airport.
According to the Boryspil Airport website, as of 10:50 p.m. on Dec. 9, the outbound flights departed as scheduled, while several arrivals were rescheduled. Three flights, a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul, a Qatar Airways flight from Doha, and an Emirates/Fly Dubai flight from Dubai, were canceled.
The Boryspil Airport published a warning on social media, advising the passengers to double-check their flights online, saying that the airport operated under difficult weather conditions. The thick fog has been covering Kyiv since the morning of Dec. 9.
