Azerbaijan's international airports served 2.4 million passengers in the first six months of 2019

Azerbaijani international airports’ passenger traffic hit 2.4 million people in the first half of 2019. Of these, 2 million accounted for the Heydar Aliyev International Airport, which is 73,000 passengers more than the same figure last year.

The second busiest airport was Nakhchivan - 284 thousand passengers, the third - the airport of Ganja with a passenger flow of 70 thousand people for the first six months of this year.

During this period, the base air carriers - AZAL and Buta Airways carried 853,000 and 234,000 passengers, respectively. In total, this is about 57,000 passengers more than in the previous year.

The number of passengers on international flights of Baku airport amounted to 1.76 million, 32.8 percent of which accounted for AZAL, while 13.2 percent for Buta Airways. The share of foreign airlines during this period hit 54 percent.

Currently, 31 passenger airlines carry out direct flights to Heydar Aliyev International Airport. The top five popular foreign airlines in addition to AZAL and Buta Airways are Turkish Airlines, Aeroflot and FlyDubai.

It should be noted that from the airports of Ganja and Nakhchivan direct flights are carried out to Moscow and Istanbul. Also,the national airline AZAL operates regular direct flights from Lankaran and Gabala to Moscow and vice versa.

Heydar Aliyev International Airport (IATA: GYD) is the largest airport in Azerbaijan and the region in terms of passenger and freight traffic, takeoff and landing operations, the airport terminal area and capacity of the cargo complex.

Heydar Aliyev was also named the best airport among airports of Russia and CIS countries for the level of the provided services for the three years in a row and awarded the maximum rating of "5 Stars" according to Skytrax World Airport Awards. In 2019, Heydar Aliyev International Airport was named the best airport with a passenger traffic of up to 10 million according to the Sky Travel Awards.