Chisinau airport

Aeroportul Internațional Chișinău
Characteristics
ICAO code	LUKK
IATA code	KIV
Coordinates	46 ° 55 '40 "  N , 28 ° 55' 55"  E Coordinates: 46 ° 55 '40 "  N , 28 ° 55' 55"  E
Height above MSL	90 m (295  ft )
Transport links
Distance from the city center	14 km south of Chișinău
Street	Bulevardul Dacia
Basic data
operator	Avia Invest
Terminals	1
Passengers	2,995,530 (2019)
Air freight	3,768 t (2019)
Flight movements	27.092 (2019)
Start-and runway
08/26	3590 m × 44 m concrete

The Chisinau airport ( IATA : KIV , ICAO : LUKK ; Romanian Aeroportul Internaţional Chişinău , Russian Международный аэропорт Кишинёва ) is the international passenger airport of the Moldovan capital Chisinau . It is located about 14 km south of the city center and is the largest and most important airport in the country.

Airlines and Destinations

Chișinău has various connections to important Western and Eastern European metropolises and serves as a base for Air Moldova and Fly One and is also an important hub for Wizz Air . There are flights to Kiev , Milan and London as well as German-speaking destinations Frankfurt am Main with Air Moldova, Vienna with Austrian Airlines , Munich with Lufthansa CityLine and Berlin-Schönefeld , Dortmund and Memmingen with Wizz Air. Long-haul and domestic flights are currently not offered. Most of the flight connections are to Italy , Rome, Milan, Venice, Turin, Bergamo and Verona. The most frequented destination is Moscow with around 60 flights a week.

There are also cargo flights to Prague and Bucharest with DHL and Farnair International .

history

The first flight took place in 1926 as a stopover on the Bucharest - Galați - Chișinău - Iași route . Later there were isolated flights to Ukraine and Romania .

After the Second World War , the first line connections were made to various cities in the Soviet Union . All flights were carried out exclusively with propeller planes and helicopters. The first jets landed at the airport from 1969 when the Moldovan Aeroflot Division took over their first Tu-134 . In 1970 an Antonov An-10 crashed while approaching on Aeroflot flight 888 .

Due to the steadily growing number of passengers, it was decided in 1974 to build a new terminal, which was opened in 1976. In the same year, the airport handled over 800,000 passengers for the first time. The range of routes grew steadily and was expanded, especially in the 1980s. The Moldovan Aeroflot division was one of the largest in the country, carrying over one million passengers to over 90 destinations across the Soviet Union. At the end of the 1980s, today's runway was opened, replacing the old runway, which was more than 1000 meters shorter and which was converted into a taxiway . The first international connection was opened in 1990.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, passenger numbers also fell. Due to the collapse of the country's economy, the Transnistria conflict and the breakdown of all economic and diplomatic relations with other former Soviet states, there was almost no air traffic in 1992 and 1993. Sometimes the airport had to be closed for weeks because there was no longer any fuel available. All flights within Moldova were previously suspended. After some reforms and initiatives by the Moldovan authorities, the airport received the status of an International Airport on May 31, 1995. Since then, the aviation sector has steadily recovered.

In 2002 the airport was completely expanded and rebuilt in cooperation with the Turkish Akfen Holding and now has a capacity of 5.4 million passengers a year. The number of passengers and the number of flight movements have increased every year since then. The first flight of a commercial aircraft between Frankfurt and Chișinău took place on July 7, 2003. It was a Lufthansa charter flight , on which 182 passengers were carried with an Airbus A321 . It was also the first landing of this type of aircraft at Chișinău Airport. In 2015, the passenger terminal was expanded and expanded again and a new parking garage opened, which quadrupled the number of parking spaces at the airport.

By 2018, the former runway is to be expanded again into a fully functional 2,400 meter runway in order to relieve the longer main runway during the modernization work.

statistics

year	Passenger volume	Flight movements
1996	250,800	3619
1997	283,000	4718
1998	265,900	4871
1999	233,300	4613
2000	167,708	5519
2001	274,387	9866
2002	294,621	10,416
2003	341,585	9502
2004	421.011	10,759
2005	482,741	11,126
2006	548,300	10,065
2007	689,000	11,685
2008	847.881	12,000
2009	809.072	12,355
2010	937.030	13,751
2011	1,045,975	15,022
2012	1,220,496	16,119
2013	1,321,362	17,555
2014	1,757,411	19,756
2015	2,219,162	22,468
2016	2,206,266	22,033
2017	2,744,465	27,133
2018	2,828,626	27,949
2019	2,995,530	27.092

Incidents

• On April 13, 2008 , a Sudanese Antonov An-32 crashed while attempting an emergency landing. All eight occupants of the cargo plane were killed in the crash.

useful information

Every year in the summer months, an open house takes place at the airport over several days , with flight demonstrations and events for families.

Since 2014, Avia Invest , the airport operating company, has been publishing a music video every December in which several well-known Moldovan stars appear and sing a New Year's Eve or Christmas carol composed especially for this video in English, Russian and Romanian, performing as airport employees.

Web links

Commons : Chișinău International Airport  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Website of Aeroportul Internațional Chișinău (Romanian, Russian, English)
• Civil Aviation Administration website (Romanian, Russian, English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Brief analysis regarding passengers' traffic for period in 2019. Civil Aviation Authority - Republic of Moldova, accessed on June 24, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Chisinau Airport to get a second runway - Russian aviation news . In: Russian Aviation Insider . March 22, 2017 ( rusaviainsider.com [accessed March 27, 2017]).