Irkutsk Airport
Irkutsk Airport (IATA: IKT) is the gateway to Lake Baikal and has one of the most modern airport terminals in all of Siberia. The airport is only 4 kilometers from the city, making it easy to reach. It is one of the largest airports in Siberia and the Russian Far East. It mainly serves domestic Russian flights (75 percent of all flights), as well as some international flights to Japan, China, Thailand, and Malaysia.
Planned new airport: Irkutsk Airport
Construction work on a larger, more modern airport for Irkutsk was originally scheduled to begin in 2010. The new Irkutsk airport is to be located about 35 kilometers west of the Baikal metropolis, with air traffic scheduled to begin in 2015. So far (2012), however, the start of construction has continued to be postponed. The new airport would be of great importance to the city of Irkutsk. As a hub for all of Central Siberia, the existing airport is reaching the limits of its capacity.
The enormous terminal at Irkutsk’s existing airport can handle 40 aircraft a day. At peak times, it can process up to 800 passengers per hour. As a result, Irkutsk Airport can barely keep up with demand for flights.
A hub for Siberia
All major Russian airlines offer flights to Irkutsk. Tickets to Irkutsk can be purchased for flights from Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Kyiv, Tashkent, Nizhny Novgorod, and other major cities in Russia and the CIS.
Irkutsk Airport was founded back in 1925. At the time, an aircraft—one of the entrants in a competition for the fastest flight from Moscow to Beijing—landed on a packed-earth field not far from Irkutsk. Almost 100 years later, not the slightest trace of that field remains: the clay runway has become one of Russia’s modern airports, albeit one with capacity problems.
