13 Jul 2022 12:05

Sukhum airport to be opened in 2024 - Abkhaz president

UFA. July 13 (Interfax) - The airport of Sukhum, the capital of Abkhazia, is expected to be commissioned in 2024, Abkhaz President Aslan Bzhania said at a meeting at the administration of the Russian internal republic of Bashkortostan on Wednesday.

"Work is underway, and an investor has been identified to launch our Sukhum airport," Bzhania said. "We should launch the airport in 2024," he said.

An Abkhaz delegation led by Bzhania is currently on a working trip to Ufa.

The airport is located 18 kilometers away from Sukhum. It was built in 1950 and has been upgraded several times since then. The Georgian government closed the airport following the Georgian-Abkhaz war in October 1993. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) annulled the Sukhum airport's code and deleted information on it from its documents in 2006.

In July 2019, the Abkhaz government issued a resolution on granting the Sukhum airport "joint airfield" status and assigning a letter code to it. The government resolution assigned the URAS code to Abkhazia's airspace to be further entered into Russia's Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP).