Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (LYBE/BEG) is Serbia's principal international gateway, lying some 18 km west of central Belgrade near the suburb of Surčin. It serves as the hub for Air Serbia and an operating base for Wizz Air, and its long, well-equipped runway makes it a straightforward if busy destination for visiting simulator pilots flying larger types.
Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport is the largest and busiest airport in Serbia, situated in the Surčin district roughly 18 km west of downtown Belgrade amid flat, fertile lowlands. It is operated by Vinci Airports and named after the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla. The field is the hub for flag carrier Air Serbia and an operating base for Wizz Air, and it also hosts the air taxi operators Air Pink, Eagle Express and Prince Aviation, giving it a mix of airline and business/general aviation traffic that a visiting pilot should expect to work around.
The airport lies west of Belgrade near Surčin, surrounded by open agricultural land, and as Serbia's main international gateway it sits within controlled airspace served by its own approach and tower units. Pilots planning a VFR approach should expect to operate under positive control throughout, coordinating with Belgrade Approach well before entering the zone.
The field has a single physical runway aligned 12/30, hard-surfaced and lit. Runway 12 has a landing/take-off length of 11,117 ft, while runway 30 offers 9,822 ft, the difference reflecting the declared distances available in each direction. Field elevation is 325 ft.
Radio services are provided on Approach 119.1 MHz and 133.1 MHz, Tower 118.1 MHz, with an ATIS broadcast on 122.925 MHz. Pilots should monitor ATIS for current weather and runway-in-use information before contacting Approach or Tower.
Belgrade's aviation story predates the current airport by half a century. The city's first airfield opened in 1910 at Banjica and was used by early aviation pioneers before becoming a base for the Serbian Air Force and Balloon Company during the First Balkan War and the First World War; a second early airfield operated from 1911 in the lower city of Kalemegdan Fortress. An airport at Pančevo, northeast of Belgrade, began operations in 1923, hosting the Paris-Istanbul route on which the first night flight in aviation history was flown, and later serving the Royal Yugoslav Air Force academy and, after the Second World War, the Utva Aviation Industry. Because crossing the Danube from Pančevo was impractical, a new airport closer to the city was built at Dojno Polje, opening on 25 March 1927 as Belgrade International Airport; from 1928 it was used by the pioneering local airline Aeroput. The site had four grass runways up to 2,900 metres long, a reinforced-concrete hangar designed by the scientist Milutin Milanković, a modern terminal from 1931, and poor-visibility landing aids installed in 1936. Before the Second World War, Belgrade was a major European air hub linking London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul and destinations as far afield as Cairo, Karachi and India, and it served as a stopover for long-distance air races such as the Schlesinger African Air Race. German occupation forces used the airport from April 1941, and it was bombed by Allied forces in 1944. In more recent times the runway was upgraded to CAT IIIb instrument landing standard in 2005, and the airport was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in 2006.
The airport is operated by Vinci Airports under a concession granted by the Government of Serbia in 2018, and functions as the hub for Air Serbia and an operating base for Wizz Air. It is also home to the air taxi operators Air Pink, Eagle Express and Prince Aviation, reflecting a continuing mix of scheduled airline and business aviation activity alongside the main commercial operation.
