All about the airports of Crimea

For many decades, Crimea has been considered the closest and one of the most convenient and affordable resort areas for citizens of most of Russia and some other post-Soviet states. After 2014, there was an acute problem with how to get to the peninsula, and today aviation remains the most convenient option, especially since we have worked on the development of air traffic. In this case, you need to figure out exactly how to get here.

If you pay attention only to official statistics, it may seem that in a relatively small Crimea there are enough airports to reach any corner of its territory. In practice, everything turns out to be noticeably more complicated, because we will go through all the airports briefly.

• International Airport in Simferopol - the main air gate of the Crimea. This is the only airfield accepting regular civilian passenger flights. Due to the fact that after 2014 it became a strategic infrastructure object on the peninsula, it was reconstructed and its capacities were greatly increased - in the season this airport receives planes of about 70 destinations, and in 2017 it served more than 5 million passengers. Moreover, its international status is conditional - because of the sanctions, they fly here only from Russia.

Good transport links to all corners of Crimea are established from here. By the way, the advertised “Crimean wave”, opened in 2018, is not a separate airport, as some media have mistakenly reported, but just a new terminal at Simferopol Airport.

• Belbek Airport near Sevastopol can be considered the second airport of Crimea, if only because it also retained international status. However, this is even more arbitrary than in Simferopol - today it is a purely military airfield, which only occasionally takes charter flights. A small number of regular routes were established until 2014, after which the talk about activating the passenger air service remained just talk.

• The second airport of Simferopol, "Factory", on the map can be found southwest of the city. For arriving tourists, it is uninteresting, since recently it has been used only for emergency rescue flights and rare parachutist training. The prospects for this airfield are very vague, it is possible that in the coming years it will disappear altogether.

• The airport in Kerch, also known as "Voikovo", in Soviet times had an important regional status, until 2014 there were attempts to organize regular passenger flights. In recent years, despite the discussion of the possibility of a full load of runways, the airport was in decline, and only in 2018 began to gradually accept separate charters.

As it becomes apparent from the above list, Simferopol International Airport is the only aviation destination in Crimea for the average tourist, whose pockets are not puffed from millions stored there.

If we discard seasonal flights in the warm season, the number of airlines and flights, of course, will decrease. Consider the main destinations where you can fly from Simferopol.

• Moscow. Capital airports attract the maximum amount of attention, even in winter there is no problem in getting there. Regular flights on a year-round basis to Vnukovo are operated by Azimut, Gazprom Avia, Russia and Yakutia. You can get to Domodedovo by the efforts of Alrosa, S7 Airlines, Red Wings Airlines, Ural Airlines and Globus. In the case of Sheremetyevo, the choice of carriers is relatively modest - only Aeroflot, Pegas Fly or Nordwind Airlines. You can still fly through the Zhukovsky airport - such a service is provided by Ural Airlines.

• St. Petersburg. Regardless of its enormous size and great significance for the country, regular communication with the Northern capital is established on a much smaller scale than with Moscow. Only Nordwind Airlines, Russia, Ural Airlines and Yamal fly there year-round; in the summer season, the assortment of carriers increases, but not globally.

• Cities of the European part of Russia. That's where the difference between year-round and seasonal traffic is especially noticeable - the intensity of flights in the summer here increases by 2-3 times. There are not so many flights all year round. Oddly enough, Simferopol is best connected to Sochi - even in winter both Aeroflot and Nordwind Airlines fly there, which is apparently caused by the properties of the southernmost airport in Russia as a major interchange hub. Other destinations available non-stop throughout the year are Mineralnye Vody (Azimut), Arkhangelsk (Nordavia), Izhevsk (Izhavia), and Kazan (YuVT Aero).

• Cities of the Asian part of Russia. The considerable remoteness of Crimea from these parts leads to the fact that only for the largest local cities does it make sense to organize a constant and year-round passenger service. Direct flights connect Simferopol even in winter with only three local cities - Yekaterinburg (Ural Airlines), Tyumen (Yamal) and Novosibirsk (Globus).At the same time, here in the summer, the number of flights, as well as the diversity of carriers and destinations grow many times over.

Cities to which there are year-round flights from Simferopol can also have additional seasonal connections, including through other airlines. We will not mention them again, but just look at the airlines that provide seasonal flights to destinations that have never been mentioned above:

• Azimut - Krasnodar and Rostov-on-Don;

• “Alrosa” - Tomsk;

• Pegas Fly - Barnaul, Belgorod, Irkutsk, Kirov, Nizhnevartovsk, Nizhnekamsk, Orenburg, Chelyabinsk and Saratov;

• “Nordavia” - Murmansk, Ivanovo, Volgograd and Cheboksary;

• Nordwind Airlines - an impressive list of one and a half dozen points in the European (Volgograd, Krasnodar, Voronezh and so on) and Asian (Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk, Khabarovsk and other) parts of the country;

• Red Wings Airlines - more than 10 destinations throughout the country, including Nizhny Novgorod, Omsk, Perm and Samara;

• Izhavia - Penza, Nizhnekamsk;

• “Russia” - up to 10 seasonal destinations, mainly in the European part or in the Urals;

• Severstal - Cherepovets;

• Ural Airlines - about a dozen summer destinations, most of which are oriented to the Urals and Siberia;

• YuVT Aero - Voronezh, Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, Samara, Surgut, Ufa;

• “Yamal” - Nizhnevartovsk, Novy Urengoy, Salekhard, Surgut, Khanty-Mansiysk;

• RusLine - Kaluga, Voronezh, Kursk, Lipetsk, Tambov;

• Kostroma airline - Kostroma.

Numerous distributors are engaged in the sale of airline tickets, while the average user can choose any of them - the one whom he considers most convenient for himself. If you want to purchase tickets without extra charges, but at the same time study the flight schedule and flight conditions in detail, it is most reasonable to purchase travel documents on the website of the airline that you have chosen as the carrier. Today it’s quite simple to do this even with the help of the Internet, but if you suddenly live near the airport or airline’s office, you can come for a ticket personally.

If you are planning to fly to Simferopol from a large city that is connected to the point of departure by several flights of different airlines, it makes sense to go to some sort of airline aggregator like Aviasales or Kiwi.

If your airport on the selected date is not connected by any direct flight with Simferopol, the resource will calculate possible transfer options and also make it easy to compare them with each other in all respects. As a rule, when choosing the option you like, such a website allows you to immediately book or buy tickets, or redirects you to the website of the carrier itself, where there will be such an opportunity.

In the "real" world, many travel agencies provide such a service, which even in our information age perform the functions of railway and air ticket offices. This option is good for those who are not too fond of using the Internet or are afraid to pay money, and then mess up something and be left without a ticket. Of course, when buying through a tour operator, the cost of the flight will be slightly higher for you, but the advantage here is that you do not have any organizational responsibilities - they will do everything for you, and you can be sure of the professional provision of the trip.

At the same time, experienced travelers are advised to understand the issue before buying anything. For example, Moscow has three (or even four, if we consider “Zhukovsky”) airports, and it seems logical to fly away from the one you live closer to. At the same time, there is a pattern according to which a flight from Sheremetyevo usually costs more than a similar flight from Domodedovo, because sometimes it makes sense to overpay for a taxi, saving on airfare.

At least 90% of tourists arriving at the airport of Simferopol immediately leave it, heading mainly to the southern coast of Crimea or to other coastal cities. For this reason, the question arises of how to transfer to the final destination of the trip.

Let’s say right away that car rental or taxi ride are real options if you do not spare money, but you need to understand that such a decision can significantly increase the budget of the entire vacation. For this reason, it makes sense to use public transport, which, due to the enormous popularity of the Simferopol airport, runs smoothly here.

Intercity buses can be caught right next to the passenger terminal - they are called Fly and Bus. Their schedule is directly related to the schedule of the airport - they leave here at the moment the plane arrives, and the passengers who left it manage to get out of the terminal and board the bus. The express train also travels in the opposite direction - it tries to arrive at the moment when its passengers still have time to go through all airport procedures. Given the busyness of the airport, buses simply run with high frequency, they go to relatively small settlements a little less often, tied to the most popular flights.

Many have heard that Crimea is almost the only place in the world where you can travel tens of kilometers from one city to another on a trolleybus. You can get from Simferopol to Yalta and Alushta by trolleybus, as well as numerous resort villages between them, and there is even a trolleybus stop near the Simferopol airport terminal, but here you need to take into account that there are no direct trolleybus intercity routes from the airport - from here the “horned” ones will only take you to the Crimean capital Cities.

If you certainly need to get into Simferopol itself, then you can use both the services of intracity buses (they have numbers) and a taxi. The distance to the center is about 14 kilometers, while public transport runs even at night.

Details about the new terminal of Simferopol airport you will learn from the video.