According to official figures released by the Airports Council International (ACI), Samarkand International Airport was the fastest-growing airport in the Europe and Central Asia region in 2024.
Samarkand Airport’s growth in numbers
With 1.38 million passengers passing through the modern terminal, equating to growth of 36.6% compared with 2023, Samarkand grew twice as quickly as the next fastest-growing airport of Olbia (+18.4%), which is located on the Italian island of Sardinia.
In 2024, growth in passenger traffic at Samarkand was driven from overseas destinations, with more than 1.31 million international passengers passing through the airport. The most popular flights were from Samarkand to Abu Dhabi, Istanbul, Jeddah, Moscow and St Petersburg. The number of take-off and landing operations at Samarkand increased by 23% to 11,000 flight arrivals and departures.
At the end of 2024, Samarkand International Airport expanded its route network to three domestic and 23 international destinations. Among the new destinations that opened last year were: Xi’an (China), Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt), Turkestan (Kazakhstan), and Tyumen, Nizhny Novgorod and Irkutsk (Russia).
The story behind the success
Ulugbek Shamsikulov, CEO of Air Marakanda, the airport management company for Samarkand airport, said, “Our growth is reward for the visionary investment made in our ultra-modern 21st century Samarkand airport terminal during a challenging global epidemic. These figures underline the pent-up demand for air travel in this historic region and Samarkand’s position as a fast-emerging center for tourism and commerce in Central Asia.”
A Uzbek business entrepreneur and investor Bakhityor Fazilov is recognized as spearheading the development of Samarkand International Airport in a first major public-private partnership (PPP) with the Government of Uzbekistan. The new terminal opened in early 2022 and has reported record-breaking growth ever since.
Fazilov commented, “At the turn of this decade and together with our government we had a vision to develop tourism in Samarkand. We have married new infrastructure and facilities – like our airport and the Silk Road Samarkand tourist center – with the unique historic and traditional features of this city. We are now seeing the fruits of that investment, with our airport now becoming one of the world’s fastest-growing.
“Congratulations to everyone at Air Marakanda, a team that is delivering the kind of customer service excellence that will maintain the growth of Samarkand International Airport long into the future. We are delivering economic benefits for our historic home city, for this fast-developing region and for our country of Uzbekistan, and there is much more to come.”
ACI’s industry findings
While airports in Europe/Central Asia were found to finally surpassed pre-Covid figures of 2019 with passenger traffic of 2.5 billion, Uzbekistan’s historic city of Samarkand bucked that trend with 186% growth over the five-year period.
Additionally, the ACI figures also highlight that while overall passenger numbers were 1.8% above 2019 figures and 7.4% up on 2023, some 47% of airports still lagged behind their pre-pandemic volumes.
Olivier Jankovec, director general of ACI Europe, said that airports in its region had welcomed an additional 200 million passengers last year despite “continued supply pressures, mostly tepid economic growth and geopolitical tensions. That clearly speaks volumes about how consumers are now prioritizing experiences and travel in particular. 2024 also confirmed major structural post-Covid shifts, with leisure and visiting friends and relatives (VFR) demand and low-cost carriers largely defining traffic performance – along with airline consolidation, changing air connectivity dynamics and geopolitics.”
Shamsikulov added, “Air Marakanda will continue to work with our airline partners to further expand our route network, to improve the quality of service for all customers and to modernize our infrastructure with the introduction of digital services to simplify passenger interactions.”
In related news, OAG recently unveiled its annual ranking of the world’s busiest airports for 2024, which found that Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson remained world’s busiest airport. Click here to read the full story.