Departure
93%
vs 95% ▼ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Natakhtari Airfield is a small domestic airfield in the Mukhrani Valley of Mtskheta-Mtianeti, Georgia, some 20 kilometres north of Tbilisi. Privately owned and operated by Service Air, it is the base for Vanilla Sky Airlines' scheduled flights to Georgia's more remote regions and offers a straightforward VFR destination close to the capital.
Natakhtari Airfield is a privately owned domestic airfield serving the Tbilisi metropolitan area, located in the Mukhrani Valley near the town of Natakhtari. It is operated by Service Air, the parent company of Vanilla Sky Airlines, which uses the field as its hub for scheduled flights to smaller Georgian destinations. For a sim pilot, it offers an interesting short-hop or bush-style destination away from the busier Tbilisi International, set among the mountains of the Mukhrani Valley.
The airfield lies in the Mukhrani Valley, about 9 kilometres north of Mtskheta, Georgia's historic former capital, and roughly 20 kilometres north of central Tbilisi. It sits close to the S3 highway running north toward the Russian border and the S1 highway to the west of the country, both useful references for a VFR approach.
Natakhtari has a single physical runway, 10/28, of hard surface construction. Runway 10 is 2508 feet long and Runway 28 is 2502 feet long; both directions are equipped with runway lighting. There is no ILS at the field.
No air-ground or ATC communications frequencies are published for Natakhtari Airfield, and there are no navaids or instrument approaches associated with the field.
The historic town of Mtskheta, 9 kilometres to the south, is a prominent landmark for locating the field, as is the surrounding Mukhrani Valley terrain. The S3 highway to the north and the S1 highway to the west both pass near the airfield and can assist with visual navigation on approach.
During the Great Patriotic War, from 1942 to 1945, a Soviet Air Force fighter division was stationed at Natakhtari to defend strategic targets in the Caucasus and took part in the Battle of the Caucasus, also guarding air routes between Tbilisi, Batumi and Grozny. The deployment ended in September 1945. In the Soviet era the airfield carried the IATA code NTX and the ICAO code UGYG; it has since been reassigned the ICAO code UGSA and no longer holds an IATA designator. The runway was rebuilt in concrete in mid-2011, at which point the site was also expanded with a restaurant and swimming pool alongside its flying operations.
Natakhtari is today the base for Vanilla Sky Airlines, which operates scheduled domestic flights to Ambrolauri, Batumi and Mestia, with a connecting bus service to Tbilisi for passengers on these flights. Since the end of 2010 the airfield has supported flights to Mestia in the Svanetia region, and since 2017 to Ambrolauri in Racha, with services briefly suspended in 2020 before resuming that summer. The field also hosts sightseeing flights by helicopter and light aircraft such as the Cessna.