When landing at Borispol in Ukraine every foreign national is required to fill in a landing/immigration card. If you are lucky the stewardesses will hand these to passengers on board the plane to fill in.
Ensure your card is filled in before landing as they are sometimes not too pleased to have badly filled in forms. There are no pens in the immigration hall so if you forget you have to plead from your fellow passengers. Make sure every section is complete, especially the address you will be staying at. If you don’t have one just enter a Kiev hotel, they never check.
Borispol currently has only 2 land docks where the plane can dock to the terminal via a walkway. There is a lot of construction going on presently so hopefully that will change soon. It is important to get to the front of the immigration queue to save your sanity, unless queuing is a pleasurable experience for you.
It is best to sit near the front of the plane so that if it does dock at the terminal you will be amongst the first into the immigration hall with your landing card completed. Look out the windows to see where the plane has stopped !
It is more likely that the plane will stop away from the terminal, so then onto the bus. You want to be next to the doors facing the terminal when the bus gets there and the doors open. The doors on the right of the bus are always next to the terminal entrance (bus facing forward). So make sre you are either the first on the bus or the last depending how you board the bus by the plane. Normally one plane load requires 2 buses.
Rushing into immigration hall you are faced with hopefully short queues unless a stack of planes arrived recently, when the queue can be out the door ! The immigration hall has about 10 queues or so. The lines to the far right are for Ukrainians only. The one line on the far left is for airline staff only. Don’t dare go there unless invited. So head for the remaining desks in the centre.
Every desk has two windows for processing and sometimes one or 2 lines depending which nationality plane arrived last. Both windows on each desk may not be open so quickly scan for desks with both open and join those lines. The ukrainian windows on the far right will accept non ukrainians when the ukrainians are all dealt with so being on that side of the hall offers another option.
The immigration officer does not care much about what is on the landing card as long as all the holes are filled in so do ensure no gaps anywhere.
Bags can arrive quickly or slowly like any airport but normally by the time you are through immigration the bags are there. There is a customs check as you leave but if you walk confidently it is unlikely you will be stopped. If you are most issues can be resolved one way or another.
Borispol is a long way out of Kiev, around 40 kms or so. The transit options into Kiev centre are taxi or the bus. A taxi will cost about 150 grvynias (UAH), a bus 30 UAH. It is often worth finding a fellow traveller to split the taxi with, there is normally plenty of bonding time in the immigration queue! To get local currency there are 2 ATM machines just to the right as you exit into the terminal. Alternatively there are money exchanging offices in the terminal if you want to change dollars or euros (any other currencies will give you mch worse exchange rates). There is a branch of a bank in the terminal where much better rates will be found than the money exchange office (maybe 10% more or so) but it is only open 9-5. It is located in the centre of the terminal towards the departures section.
When you enter the arrivals hall it will be very busy and plenty of men will be offering you taxi rides. It is best to head outside the terminal where you can negotiate in more peace. A good price for a foreigner is about 150UAH into the town centre. Lower can be achieved by ordering a taxi by phone from a Kiev company but you need to speak russian and then will not save a great deal – that cost may be about 110UAH.
There will be a negotiator with whom you agree the fare and he will agree a price before leading you to one of his drivers, who is unlikely to speak english, so make sure the destination is clear or written down. If the price is too high just walk away and find someone else.
An alternative is the official taxi desk located between the terminals which appears to be more official but offers taxis at 250UAH to the centre so no real advantage there!
Bus. The Atass airport bus goes from outside the main terminal (right exit) to the back of the main train station in the centre. It leaves about every 45 minutes and costs 30UAH. The bus is pretty comfortable. The alternative is the mini-bus ( marshootka in russian). These are the standard transport option and leave when they are full, not so much room for suitcases as the big bus but not bad. They also cost 30UAH and drop off at the main train station as well. The train station is not the first stop so make sure you see the big building before disembarking.
Enter the station, you are at the new station entrance at the back. The metro is through the new railway station and into the old station which is much more attractive. The train station is 1.5km from the central area, kreshatik, so walk which is quite pleasant (follow the road hidden behind McDonalds and the car park about 700 metres and then turn right up the road with the big sidewalk in the middle), or catch the metro which is to the right outside the old station entrance. Aim for the heavy glass doors. Buy a token at the cash window or from the machines (2UAH a ride).
Buses returning to Borispol go from the back of the station every 20 minutes. Small signs in the window will say Borispol.
The nearest hotel to Borispol airport, 5 minutes walk from the airport is not available to book online. It is nothing special and can be normally booked on arrival. Other hotels which are bookable are in the town of Borispol, a 15 minute taxi ride away or on the motorway into Kiev, again not very handy. It is best to stay in Kiev.