Samarkand International Airport handled more than one million passengers in the first nine months of 2024, a rise of 43% or 308,000 customers than in the same period last year.
This figure exceeded number of passengers handled in the whole of 2023, when the airport passed the 1 million mark for a first-ever time, serving a total of 1,010,938 passengers. The latest figures cement Samarkand’s position as the second fastest-growing airport in Europe and Central Asia.
Air Marakanda, the airport’s ground handling and management company, says the positive growth in passenger traffic is due to an increase in the number of flights from new and existing carriers, delivering a further increase in the routes served from the airport.
Dmitry Martynenko, Commercial Director of Air Marakanda, says: “We have now achieved 24 consecutive months of passenger growth in domestic and international travel, underlining the pent-up potential demand that exists for air travel to and from our incredible ancient city of Samarkand.”
Air Marakanda reports that the most noticeable increase in passenger traffic came from its expanding international route network, with flights to Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Jeddah, Moscow and St. Petersburg leading the growth, with 780,000 passengers served on these five routes, an 11% increase over the same period in 2023.
The volume of traffic on domestic services amounted to 49,000 passengers.
Samarkand International Airport continues to expand its route network, and in just nine months flights from Samarkand were operated on two domestic and 24 international routes. Of these, Xi'an, Turkestan, Tyumen, Nizhny Novgorod and Irkutsk were opened for the first time in 2024.
Passenger volumes at SKD have also been driven by the development of services by its new ‘home-based’ carrier Air Samarkand, whose extensive international charter and scheduled flight programme includes services to Istanbul, Jeddah, Nha Trang and Sharm El Sheikh, together with a twice-weekly domestic shuttle to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent.
Data released in August by the European airport industry organisation ACI Europe, showed that Samarkand International Airport had grown passenger volumes by 191.6% since the equivalent pre-Covid pandemic figures of 2019. This represented the second largest growth of any airport measured by ACI Europe, which represents over 500 airports in 55 countries. This was way ahead of the 9% average growth recorded between 2019-2024 across its airports in European / Central Asia, according to ACI Europe, whose airports stretch across Europe plus Albania, Armenia, Belarus, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Georgia, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
Air Marakanda is focused on key strategic areas, such as compliance with international aviation safety standards, implementation of environmental protection measures, modernization of airport infrastructure and improvement of the passenger experience.
