Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Cholpon-Ata Airport is a disused Soviet-era airfield on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, once serving the resort town of the same name. Superseded by Issyk-Kul International Airport (Tamchy) and now abandoned, its single hard runway remains visible from the air amid the region's petroglyph fields, making it more a historical curiosity than a viable destination for the simulator pilot.
Cholpon-Ata Airport (ICAO: UAFG) sits beside the resort town of Cholpon-Ata on the northern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, in Kyrgyzstan's Issyk-Kul Region. Built to serve the town's Soviet-era holiday trade, it was for decades the local gateway to one of Central Asia's most striking alpine lakes, and it remains an interesting stop for the sim pilot chiefly for its history and dramatic lakeside and mountain setting rather than for any current activity, since the field is now abandoned.
The airport lies on the northern shore of Issyk-Kul at coordinates 42.6495, 77.0585, within Kyrgyz airspace over the Issyk-Kul Region. It sits close to the town of Cholpon-Ata itself, with the lake immediately to the south and the Kungei Alatau range rising to the north; the open-air petroglyph museum lies just outside the town, adjacent to where the airfield's runway ends.
The airfield has a single physical runway, 16/34, 5,603 feet long with a hard surface.
No communications frequencies are published for Cholpon-Ata Airport, and there is no instrument landing system or other approach aid associated with the field.
No joining, circuit or noise abatement procedures are documented for this airfield; given its abandoned status, no active traffic pattern is in use.
The airfield's disused runway runs toward the open-air petroglyph museum on the edge of Cholpon-Ata, and the ruins of the old terminal and runway are visible on the ground close to the museum site, making the museum area and the lakeshore useful visual references for locating the field from the air.
Cholpon-Ata Airport began operating in the 1930s as a simple landing strip on the northern shore of Issyk-Kul, with the current runway and terminal constructed in the 1970s during the Soviet period. The runway carried a weight limit of 22 tonnes, had no instrument landing facilities, and operated only during daylight hours. Until 2003 the airport maintained regular scheduled links with Bishkek, Osh and Jalal-Abad, but it was subsequently replaced by the newer Issyk-Kul International Airport and fell out of use; there have been proposals to redevelop the site as a VIP airport owing to its proximity to nearby governmental resorts.
The airport is now abandoned and no longer supports scheduled or general flying operations, having been superseded by Tamchy (Issyk-Kul International) Airport. Visitors on the ground can still see the ruins of the old runway and terminal, which end near the open-air petroglyph museum outside Cholpon-Ata. There is no fuel, air traffic service, or flight-simulator scenery development noted for the field.