Departure
99%
vs 95% ▲ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Tiksi Airport is a remote military aerodrome on the Arctic coast of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, operated by the Russian Aerospace Forces just northeast of the town of Tiksi. Built in the 1950s as a Cold War staging base for Soviet Long Range Aviation bombers, it retains a single long hard-surfaced runway and continues to support both military bomber operations and a limited civil air service to this isolated northern settlement.
Tiksi Airport sits on the Arctic coast of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, a few hundred metres from the town of Tiksi. It is operated by the Russian Aerospace Forces and was built in the 1950s as a Cold War staging airfield, giving it a long single runway more typical of a strategic bomber base than a civil field. For a simulator pilot it offers a genuinely remote, high-latitude destination with a stark Arctic setting, a lone long runway, and a mix of military and sparse civil traffic.
The aerodrome lies about 1 kilometre northeast of Tiksi, a small town on the shore of the Laptev Sea in the far north of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic. Two other airfields in the vicinity, known as Tiksi North and Tiksi West, have been abandoned for decades and are believed to be unusable.
The airport has a single physical runway, 03/21, with a hard surface and runway lighting. The 03 threshold measures 9,130 feet in length and the 21 threshold 9,053 feet; there is no ILS at the field.
Radio facilities recorded for the field include RDR on 128.5 MHz and a tower/landing frequency, callsign KRUG, on 124 MHz.
Tiksi Aerodrome was built in the 1950s as a staging, or 'bounce', base for Soviet Long Range Aviation bombers intending to reach the United States. It has been used regularly by Tupolev Tu-95 bombers during military exercises, including one in 1999 that practised routes to the Canadian Arctic, and the base has been home to the Aviation Command of the 200th Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment, operating Mil Mi-8 helicopters of the 326th Heavy Bomber Aviation Division. On 1 October 2012 the Defence Ministry, as owner of the airfield, closed it without notice because the runway was judged unsafe and in need of repair; the closure, uncoordinated with local or regional government, cut off a key supply route for medicine, food and other essentials to Tiksi, contributing to a boiler failure in the town during February 2013. The matter reached the highest levels of Russian government, with Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev describing the Defence Ministry's action as 'a real mistake' that jeopardised the town's existence. Negotiations led to the resumption of Antonov An-24 services in June 2013, and runway reconstruction was scheduled to proceed in phases with expected completion around 2015 or 2016; further Defence Ministry statements in 2014 spoke of restoring the airport's infrastructure as part of wider plans for military settlements in the Russian Arctic. On 19 December 2016 an Ilyushin Il-18 of the Russian Aerospace Forces crashed on approach to the aerodrome; there were no fatalities among the 39 occupants, though several were injured.
Tiksi remains a military airfield under the Russian Aerospace Forces, with a scheduled civil service operated using the Antonov An-24. Polar Airlines has flown the route to Yakutsk, while Yakutia Airlines has served both Yakutsk and Moscow-Vnukovo. Given the field's military ownership and its history of sudden closure for safety reasons, pilots should treat current serviceability and access with caution.