Departure
98%
vs 95% ▲ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Vilnius International Airport (EYVI) is Lithuania's principal gateway, lying just south of the capital and handling around five million passengers a year, making it the busiest airport in the Baltic states. It operates a single long asphalt/concrete runway equipped with ILS on both approaches, and serves as a base for several major European carriers. For a simulator pilot, it offers straightforward radar-vectored jet traffic into a compact, historically layered airport that dates back to the 1930s.
Vilnius International Airport serves the Lithuanian capital and is the largest of the country's three commercial airports by passenger traffic, as well as the busiest airport in the Baltic states. It is managed by the state-owned Joint Stock Company Lithuanian Airports and acts as a hub or base for airBaltic, Ryanair and Wizz Air, with GetJet Airlines also using it as a focus city. The field's mix of a modern single-runway jet operation with a distinctly Soviet-era terminal building gives it plenty of character for a simulator pilot flying international arrivals into the Baltics.
The airport lies about 5.9 kilometres south of Vilnius city centre, in the Kirtimai district, which grew up around the neighbouring village of Porubanek after which the airfield was originally named. As Lithuania's main international airport it sits within controlled airspace served by its own approach and tower frequencies, handling both scheduled airline traffic and general aviation movements.
Vilnius has a single physical runway, 01/19, oriented north-south. It is 8,225 feet long with a hard surface, is lit, and is equipped with an ILS for approaches in both directions.
Pilots can expect Approach on 120.7 MHz, ATIS on 125.8 MHz, and Tower on 118.2 MHz. The runway is served by an instrument landing system, supporting instrument approaches to both ends of runway 01/19.
The airport began operations on 17 August 1932 as Wilno-Porubanek, taking its name from the neighbouring village of Porubanek, now part of Vilnius's Kirtimai district. Under the Second Polish Republic it operated domestic services between Wilno (Vilnius) and Warsaw and an international route to Riga, with a further route to Kaunas added from 15 April 1939. During the Second World War the airfield was used for military purposes, before resuming civil operations on 17 July 1944. The original 1930s terminal, designed by Józefa Mrówkowa-Ochmańska with Stanisław Połujan as construction manager, was a three-storey modernist building that proved too grand and too large for the airport's modest traffic at the time. The present terminal building was constructed between 1949 and 1954 in a standard 1950s Soviet style, originally sized for no more than twenty aircraft movements a day, and its exterior still carries sculptures of soldiers, workers and aviators from that period. Following Lithuanian independence in 1991, Lithuanian Airlines (later FlyLAL) inherited the Vilnius-based Aeroflot fleet before modernising with Boeing and Saab types; the carrier ceased operations in January 2009. AirBaltic opened a second base at Vilnius in 2004 and became the airport's largest carrier, while the field also served at various times as a hub for Grand Cru Airlines, Star1 Airlines, Aurela, Small Planet Airlines, Aviavilsa and Air Lituanica, all of which have since ceased operations. The airport was closed for five weeks between 14 July and 17 August 2017 for runway reconstruction, with traffic diverted to Kaunas Airport. In 2025 the airport was renamed Vilnius Čiurlionis International Airport in honour of the composer and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, a designation to run until the end of 2029, and it also experienced several closures that year due to helium weather balloons crossing from Belarus that were being used for cigarette smuggling.
Vilnius remains Lithuania's principal commercial airport and the busiest in the Baltic states, recording just over five million passengers and around 47,000 aircraft movements in 2019. It functions as a hub for airBaltic and as a focus city for GetJet Airlines, Ryanair and Wizz Air. The airport continues to be operated by the state-owned Joint Stock Company Lithuanian Airports under the Ministry of Transport and Communications.
