At Kyiv Igor Sikorsky airport (IEV) staff certification runs on a continuous cycle. Each certificate has its own validity, two or five years depending on the category, and before it expires the employee is sent for training.
"Everything the regulations and directives require of us, we do," says Volodymyr Kudak, general director of TOV Mizhnarodnyi Aeroport Kyiv, the company that operates the airport's terminals and apron. He describes the cycle as a constant dynamic process that has not been interrupted since February 2022.
The main issue, he says, does not lie in the paperwork.
"When there is no operational activity for a long time, no amount of theoretical knowledge substitutes for practice. The core problem is effectively the absence of the practical component."
No employee at the airport holds a lapsed clearance. Asked whether the airport has a complement of specialists sufficient to begin handling flights in the event of reopening, Kudak answered yes.
Staff work every day. They maintain the infrastructure, renew certificates and complete periodic training on an approved schedule. What is missing is not work and not the training of the people. What is missing is movements, that is, real flights on which normal and abnormal procedures are worked through.
Training requirements for staff have not changed over these years. The experience of coming through successive crises, 2014 first, then the pandemic, then the full-scale war, has given the airport a practice of rational workforce planning. Staff stay because they understand that the industry will need these specialists at the recovery stage.
So the airport has closed everything within its control. Documents valid, clearances valid, complement in place. What remains open is the variable the airport does not control, the number of real movements.
Where the staff are now
Part of the workforce is employed at European airports. These are mostly women who left because of the fighting, working in passenger handling, administrative functions and aviation security. All of them, according to Kudak, have stated an intention to return.
The airport has its own training centre, which continues to operate and takes part in ACI programmes. Kudak used this to explain the state of readiness as early as March 2025, in an interview with Airports International.
What the rules do not say
Ukraine has implemented European aviation rules. Regulation (EU) No 139/2014, provision ADR.OR.D.017, requires the operator to ensure that personnel demonstrate their ability through a proficiency check "at appropriate intervals to ensure continued competence". What counts as appropriate intervals, the provision does not define.
For comparison. For an air traffic controller under Regulation (EU) 2015/340, the unit endorsement is valid for a period that may not exceed three years, and its revalidation requires refresher training within that period. The closest thing to a direct requirement for practice is ICAO Annex 14, Volume I, point 9.2.34: rescue and firefighting personnel must take part in live fire drills. ICAO does not set how often those drills take place.
Kyiv airport's certification is meanwhile maintained without interruption and, according to Kudak, does not need renewal. An employee's certificate also has a validity, after which it is renewed by training. There is no period after which practice must be restored.
What Kyiv is offering European operators
The direction Kudak now sets out is secondments of staff to operating airports, first of all rescue and firefighting personnel. Training at the airport's own centre covers the theoretical part. The practical part can only be provided by an operating airport.
Talks are under way, Kudak does not name the parties. Secondments are planned once a reopening date exists. Funding for such a programme he linked, as early as March 2025, to grant mechanisms.
For the receiving side this is not charity. A specialist with valid certificates and experience of work before 2022 does not need basic training. An airport that takes on Kyiv staff will enter future commercial negotiations with a working history already in place, while others will be starting from a cold introduction.
Kyiv airport is open to proposals from European operators.
About this piece. The interview with Volodymyr Kudak, general director of TOV Mizhnarodnyi Aeroport Kyiv, was recorded on 4 August 2026. Some data is drawn from Kudak's interview with Airports International in March 2025. Provisions are cited from Regulation (EU) No 139/2014, Regulation (EU) 2015/340 and ICAO Annex 14, Volume I.