Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Aktau Airport (UATE) is Kazakhstan's principal Caspian coast gateway, serving the oil city of Aktau in Mangistau Region with a single long hard-surfaced runway. Operating since 1983 and substantially rebuilt in the late 2000s, it now ranks among the busier airports in the country and handles a mix of domestic and international scheduled traffic as well as heavy cargo movements linked to the regional oil industry.
Aktau Airport lies on the eastern shore of the Caspian Sea and serves the city of Aktau, the administrative centre of Mangistau Region in western Kazakhstan. It is operated by Aktau International Airport Joint Stock Company and functions as a full international airport equipped to handle almost all types of civil aircraft, making it of interest to sim pilots as a substantial single-runway field set in the flat, arid Caspian coastal terrain.
The airport sits at coordinates 43.86N, 51.0908E on the Caspian coast at Aktau. It is served by an area FIS frequency and a tower frequency, indicating it operates within controlled airspace with a dedicated Aktau Tower service.
Aktau has a single physical runway, 12/30, measuring 8699 feet in length with a hard surface and runway lighting. There is no ILS.
Pilots can expect to work Aktau Transit on 131.9 MHz for ground handling and A/G calls, Aktau Region FIS on 124.2 MHz, and Aktau Tower on 120.7 MHz.
Aktau Airport has been operating since 1983, originally built to support the rapid growth of the Caspian oil industry, which required increased cargo capacity and rapid delivery of equipment to oil workers in the region. Aktau International Airport Joint Stock Company was established in November 1996 to run the facility. A significant new stage began in December 2007, when, following a tender, 100 percent of the airport's shares were transferred into the trust management of the Turkish company ATM Grup Uluslararasi Havalimani Yapim Yatirim ve Isletme for a period of 28 years, alongside a concession agreement with the Akimat of Mangystau region for construction and operation of a new international passenger terminal over 30 years. Under trust management, the airport carried out reconstruction and lengthening of the runway, rebuilding of the apron and taxiways, and replacement of the non-categorised OMI lighting system with ICAO Category I lighting; after this work the runway reached 3048 metres in length and 45 metres in width, with pavement strength sufficient to accept heavy aircraft without maximum take-off weight restrictions. The new passenger terminal was completed in 2009. The airport was named winner of the 'Best Airport of the Year in the CIS countries' award in the 'Intensively developing airport' category for 2008, and in May 2010 was recognised as the most 'Promisingly developing airport in the CIS countries' for 2009.
Aktau Airport currently ranks third in the Republic of Kazakhstan by traffic, after Almaty and Astana, serving eight domestic and sixteen international destinations, with onward connections available via Moscow, Istanbul and Baku. Regional airlines feed transit passengers from smaller Kazakh cities such as Atyrau, Shymkent, Aktobe and Uralsk through Aktau to these major hubs. The airport also handles cargo, with a cargo terminal capacity of 2500 square metres that can be expanded threefold, supported by round-the-clock border control and customs posts on site that allow declaration procedures to be completed immediately on arrival.