Chișinău International Airport remained, in summer 2026, the main departure point for Ukrainian holidaymakers booked with Join Up. Internal figures, reported by mold-street.com, show that 58% of its leisure clients flew from the Moldovan capital, three percentage points more than in 2025. The share describes one tour operator's book, not the airport's entire traffic.

The other gates thinned. Rzeszów fell from 12% to 6.7% of Join Up tourists, Warsaw from 5% to 2.3%. Katowice stayed around 4%, Bucharest at 1.59%. The company ties the shift to new flights from Moldova, to transfers, and to the fact that for southern and central Ukraine the road to Chișinău is often shorter than the haul to the Polish border.

Total airport traffic is a different measure. Director Sergiu Spoială said in February that Ukrainian passengers hold about 30% of the total, regardless of month. Minister Vladimir Bolea spoke in the autumn of 35–40% and of an airport that „serves two countries”, after 2025 passed six million passengers. The gap between 58% (Join Up) and 30–40% (airport) is expected: a holiday operator is not every family, work or transit flight.

Ukrainian carriers SkyUp and Windrose hold a share of those services. In August, delays on the Kyiv–Chișinău rail link pushed some travellers onto transfer buses. This is not a ticket-buying prompt and not an official statistics-office series: it is one operator's snapshot, set beside estimates from the airport and the ministry.

The terminal extension announced by Bolea remains in a contested tender. Until then Chișinău works as a wartime hub: Ukraine's airports stay closed to civil aviation, and neighbours absorb part of the holiday demand. Join Up counts only its own clients; a full picture waits for the airport's annual figures, not a seasonal press note.

Image: My another account, aerial view of Chisinau International Airport, CC0, Wikimedia Commons; archive, not a Join Up flight from summer 2026.

Sources consulted: Chisinau Airport, the main air hub for Ukrainians - mold-street.com; Bolea: Chisinau airport serves two countries - Logos Press.