Early history

Established in 1929 as Lwów-Skniłów Airport. Skniłów was the name of the neighbouring village which today is part of Lviv. Before the Second World War, it operated a domestic route to Warsaw and Kraków. In 1930, the international route to Bucharest was launched which was extended in 1931 to Sofia and Thessaloniki. In 1936, the above route was extended to Athens and Lydda.

The base was home to the:

• 243rd Independent Mixed Aviation Regiment between 1960 and 1992 of the Soviet Air Forces.^[2]

Developments since 2010

In 2010, the airport carried 481,900 passengers.^[3] In preparation for Euro 2012, Lviv International Airport has undergone a $200m expansion project. Lviv airport's new terminal building has an area of 34,000m² with a capacity of handling 1,000 passengers an hour.^{[4][unreliable source?]} Of the $200m, it was expected that the Ukrainian government would provide $70m, including $14m in 2008, and $130m would come from private investors.^[5] The expansion project included a 700-meter extension of the existing runway and a new airport terminal capable of handling up to 2,000 passengers per hour (5.69 million passenger annually).^[4][6]

The airport used to be a focus city for Wizz Air Ukraine, which served four international routes to Italy (Naples, Bergamo, and Treviso) and Germany (Dortmund) until the airline was dissolved April 2015 (by contrast, routes from Kyiv International Airport continued after being taken over by the parent company).^[7] In January 2017, Wizz Air announced that it would be resuming flights to Lviv, initially with the introduction of a route to Wroclaw.^[8]

In March 2017, Ryanair announced that it would be launching seven routes to Lviv starting October 2017.^[9] These plans were scrapped in July after Ryanair's failure to reach an agreement with Boryspil and its subsequent decision to postpone entry into the Ukrainian market.^[10] Immediately the Ukrainian government put pressure on Boryspil and accused Ukraine International Airlines in sabotaging the agreement. This resulted in the continuation of talks with Ryanair and as of March 2018, it was announced that Ryanair would go on to open 10 new routes from Boryspil and 5 new routes from Lviv.

Terminal A

The airport has two terminals (1 and A), though only terminal A is currently in operation. Terminal A was opened in 2012. There are 29 check-in desks, of which nine are for domestic flights and the remaining twenty for international flights.^[4] It has nine gates, four of them equipped with jetbridges, and can handle up to 3,000 passengers per hour. Facilities at the airport also include four cafés and two duty-free shops, as well as two airport lounges, one in the domestic section and one in the international.

Terminal 1

Opened in 1955, this was the airport's sole terminal until 2012, when terminal A was opened. It can handle 300 departing and 220 arriving passengers per hour.^[11] There had been tentative plans to use it for VIP passengers in the future.^[12] However, in June 2019, the terminal was re-opened for domestic flights, with future plans to move charter flights to the terminal as well.^[13]