OREANDA-NEWS  Gelendzhik Airport (Krasnodar Territory) on Friday served the first passenger flight after more than 3 years of hiatus.

According to the Flightradar24 portal, the flight from Moscow (Sheremetyevo airport) was operated by Aeroflot. The Airbus A321 took off from the capital at 11.34 Moscow time. The journey time was about 4 hours.

As reported, in July, Aeroflot plans to fly in this direction once a day, in August - to increase to three times a day.

Ural Airlines will launch flights to Gelendzhik from Moscow on July 24. Starting in August, S7 will start operating regular flights to the resort from Moscow and Novosibirsk, and Smartavia from St. Petersburg.

According to the decision of the Federal Air Transport Agency, airlines will be able to fly to Gelendzhik only from 8:30 to 20:00 Moscow time.

Gelendzhik and a number of other airports in the south and central part of the Russian Federation were closed in February 2022 for security reasons. Elista Airport reopened in May 2024. Air terminals in Simferopol, Rostov-on-Don, Krasnodar, Anapa, Belgorod, Bryansk, Kursk, Voronezh, Lipetsk remain closed.

The largest co-owner of Gelendzhik Airport LLC (operates the airline complex) with a 49.5% share, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, is VTB Bank, another 40% belongs to Rossiya Bank, 10% belongs to Mirus JSC (as of early February 2024, it belonged to businessman Taymuraz Bolloev), the remaining 0.5% belongs to from Evgeny Bazhenov.