Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Gan International Airport sits on the island of Gan at the southern end of Addu Atoll, the southernmost atoll of the Maldives, and traces its origins to a Royal Navy and later Royal Air Force base built during the Second World War. Today it operates as a civilian gateway serving Addu City with a single long concrete runway, offering an interesting mix of wartime heritage and modern regional air links for the visiting VFR or IFR pilot.
Gan International Airport (ICAO: VRMG, IATA: GAN) is located on the island of Gan within Addu Atoll, also known as Seenu Atoll, at the far southern tip of the Maldives archipelago. It began life as a British military airfield before being converted for civilian use, and it is now operated by Addu International Airport Private Limited, a joint venture between Maldivian state bodies and private investors. For a simulator pilot, Gan offers a long single-runway strip surrounded by ocean and coral reef, with a history stretching back to the Fleet Air Arm and RAF Bomber Command staging routes of the 1940s.
Gan lies on the island of Gan within Addu Atoll, at the extreme south of the Maldives island chain, well removed from the capital Male and the country's other international airports. The airfield sits low and flat, at only a few feet above sea level, surrounded by the waters of the Indian Ocean and the atoll's fringing reef, with Addu City spread across the surrounding islands of the atoll.
Gan has a single physical runway, 10/28, of hard surface construction and lit for night operations. Runway 28 measures 8,413 feet and Runway 10 measures 8,380 feet, making it one of the longer strips in the Maldives and capable of handling large jet aircraft. There is no ILS available at the field.
The tower callsign is GAN TWR, operating on 119.1 MHz.
The airfield was first constructed by the Royal Navy for its Fleet Air Arm and subsequently transferred to the Royal Air Force, becoming Royal Air Force Station Gan. It served as a British military airbase until 1976, acting as a staging post for RAF aircraft flying to and from the Far East during the Second World War. The first aircraft to land on the crushed coral runway was a Westland Walrus biplane, on 8 February 1943. When the RAF withdrew in 1976 the airfield was handed over to the Government of Maldives, after which it fell into disrepair for some years before funding was found to redevelop the island and convert the former military base into a civilian domestic airport. The runway, originally around 2,651 by 45 metres, was later extended by 980 metres during the National Development Plan of the early 1980s, taking it to its present length of roughly 3,600 by 45 metres.
Gan Airport was run by the Government of Maldives with technical assistance from Maldives Airports Company Limited until January 2010, when the newly formed Gan Airport Company Limited took over management. In 2012 a joint venture between GACL, Maldives Airports Company Limited and State Trading Organization Plc was formed to develop the field to international standards, leading to its renaming as Gan International Airport under Addu International Airport Private Limited, which now owns and manages the airport; as of 2024 this company is 70 percent owned by the Maldivian government and 30 percent by KASA Holdings Private Limited. The airport is capable of accommodating ICAO code 4E aircraft and currently receives scheduled domestic services from Maldivian to destinations including Male, Kooddoo, Kulhudhuffushi, Kaadedhdhoo and Fuvahmulah, along with international service from SriLankan Airlines to Colombo. A contract was signed in 2023 for further expansion of terminal, cargo and fire-station facilities together with a new control tower.'