Last year, those who wished to go to the then still Ukrainian, and now Russian Crimea by air, bought tickets for airplanes landing in the main air harbor of the peninsula - Sevastopol Airport. Today, due to the situation in Ukraine, the air harbor is closed to passenger flights. However, the Russian authorities, as well as the citizens of the Russian Federation, accustomed to spending holidays in the Crimea, hope that soon there will be an opportunity to make regular flights here. Today we offer better to know what the airport "Sevastopol" is.
Description
Sevastopol International Airport was created on the basis of a military airfield called Belbek. The air harbor is located on the Black Sea, in the Nakhimovsky district of the hero city of Sevastopol. The airport is adjacent to the small village of Lyubimovka. The distance from the air harbor to the city center is 11 km, to Simferopol - 50 km, to Yalta - 95 km.
History
The Sevastopol Airport was founded in June 1941. Then it was a military airfield on which the fighter aviation regiment of the Air Force of the Soviet Union was based. After the end of World War II, the air harbor acquired a concrete runway (at first it was unpaved), but it continued to be used exclusively by military aircraft.
In the second half of the eighties, the airport runway was reconstructed and increased. This is due to the fact that in those days the air harbor was actively used by the first president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, who came to his Crimean cottage in Foros. It was this reconstruction that enabled the airdrome to receive civil aircraft in the future.
The first passenger flights Sevastopol Airport took in August 1993. They were organized by Omega Airlines LLC. Further work in this direction was continued by the State Rescue Service established in 1994 under the name “Sevastopol Airport”. At that time, flights to Kiev were carried out twice a week on An-24 aircraft, as well as charter transportation on IL-18 aircraft.
In 2002, the facility under consideration received the status of an international airport. In the next five years, more than four thousand flights were carried out here, about half of which were carried out in international directions. During this time, the main air harbor of Crimea was visited by more than fifty thousand passengers. However, in 2007, civilian flights were suspended due to the refusal of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense to extend the agreement on the joint use of the airfield.
Air harbor today
The functioning of the airport resumed in the spring of 2010. Dniproavia and Aerosvit Airlines began to make regular flights from Kiev to Moscow and Dnepropetrovsk. The grand opening of the renewed air harbor of Sevastopol took place on May 30, 2010
In February 2014, Belbek Airport (Sevastopol) came under the control of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.
Prospects
This spring, Maxim Sokolov, Minister of Transport of the Russian Federation, said that in the future, Sevastopol Airport will only accept charter and business flights. This is due to the fact that its capacity is only 100 people per hour, and the runway, despite its sufficient length (three thousand meters), is not designed for increased loads associated with landing and take-offs of large aircraft.
In early summer 2014, Dmitry Medvedev, Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation, signed a document on transport links with Crimea, which, among other things, stipulates the inclusion of Sevastopol's air harbor in the list of joint airfields of the Russian Federation. The prime minister also instructed the relevant authorities to start preparing documentation on the possible modernization of the airport terminal and runway.
Sevastopol Airport: how to get
From the air harbor to the city center can be reached by taxi or shuttle bus number 137, which in the summer ran every half hour. The cost of such travel was approximately 35 rubles.
If you want to get to the Sevastopol airport from the northern part of the city, you will have to get with transfers. First, you need to cross the Sevastopol Bay by boat (last year it cost about 9 rubles), and then by bus number 36 get directly to the air harbor. You will spend a little less than an hour on the road.
Sevastopol Airport: Flights
Due to the fact that today the main air harbor of Crimea is closed to civilian aircraft, temporarily no passenger flights are made here. Also now shops, cafes are closed at the airport, and other infrastructure is not functioning.