Yakutsk Airport

UEEE / YKS

Description

Platon Oyunsky Yakutsk International Airport (IATA: YKS, ICAO: UEEE) is an airport in Yakutsk, Russia. It has one runway (an older runway serves as a parking area for disused aircraft) and has a capacity of 700 passengers per hour. The airport is the hub for five regional airlines, including Yakutia Airlines and Polar Airlines.

Construction of the airport started in 1931 and was used as a stopover on the ALSIB Alaska-Siberia air route for American planes flying to Europe during World War II. The present international terminal was built in 1996. The airport serves as a diversion airport on Polar route 4. Yakutsk has another, smaller airport at Magan, used by Boeing to test cold weather starting of its aircraft.

05R/23L  Length: 11155ft  /  3400m, Surface: Concrete

Features

The weather features of the airport are most clearly manifested in the period from December to January inclusive, namely:

Yakutsk is the coldest international airport in the world. In average, the temperature at ground level drops to -38/-40 C, whereas the lowest temperature record is -64.4 C. On the flight level, the temperature can reach -60 C, or even lower.

Pilots should take into account temperature restrictions when choosing an aircraft, it becomes possible to practice cold weather operations, and in some simulators you can observe the visual effect of instant vapor.

Fog forms at low temperatures, so two months a year there are regular difficult weather conditions.

Pilots can count on fairly frequent low visibility procedures (LVP).

Due to massive changes in the configuration of the airfield, in particular the numbering and location of parking on the apron, some sceneries may differ from the current airport charts. Pilots are recommended to use the latest published charts because air traffic service is based on them.

Update of airport sceneries can be expected after construction works done, approximately in 2024.

At the moment the runway and taxiways are being reconstructed at the airfield, check out NOTAM:

Weather

Management

Sergey Balandin *

Location

Region

Eastern Russia

FIR

Yakutsk

APT coordinates

62.09330, 129.77100 

Elevation

325 ft / ≈99 m

Airport charts

Runways information

ATC positions