Hazrat Sultan International Airport (HSIA) ( kk, Халықаралық Әзірет Сұлтан Әуежайы / ), commonly known as Turkistan International Airport , is a new greenfield international airport that serves the city of

Turkistan Turkestan, also spelled Turkistan ( fa, ترکستان, Torkestân, lit=Land of the Turks), is a historical region in Central Asia corresponding to the regions of Transoxiana and Xinjiang. Overview Known as Turan to the Persians, western Turk ...

(as a replacement for the old Turkistan Airport). The airport is located near the

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

of Shaga, NE of the centre of

, the capital of the

Turkistan Region Turkistan Region (), formerly South Kazakhstan Region ( kk, Оңтүстік Қазақстан облысы, translit= Oñtüstık Qazaqstan oblysy) (russian: Южно-Казахстанская область, ') from 1992–2018 and Chimkent ...

(formerly known as South Kazakhstan Region), in the southernmost part of

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

. The construction of the airport started in May 2019, and was completed after one year in 2020 with a cost of around

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

160 million. The new airport was constructed within the framework of a PPP (Public-Private Partnership) model between Turkish YDA Holding and the

Kazakh Government The Government of the Republic of Kazakhstan ( kk, Қазақстан Республикасының Үкіметі, tr, ''Qazaqstan Respublikasynyñ Ükımetı'') oversees a presidential republic. The President of Kazakhstan, currently Kassym- ...

and is compliant with all international standards and implemented using the latest building technologies. It is the first greenfield airport to be developed in post-communist

, and the 19th

commercial airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfac ...

in the country. The opening ceremony of the new airport took place on the planned date of 28 September 2020. However, the airport will be put into operation and ready for deployment in January 2021. Moreover, Hazrat Sultan International Airport construction can be considered as the fastest airport facility construction in the world. The airport's

IATA code IATA codes are abbreviations that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) publishes to facilitate air travel. They are typically 1, 2, 3, or 4 character combinations (referred to as unigrams, digrams, trigrams, or tetragrams, respect ...

, HSA, is derived from the airport's abbreviated name of Hazrat Sultan Airport.

History

Naming

During much of the planning and construction phase the new airport was known as Turkistan International Airport. However, it was later reported that the new airport will be named after ''«Hazrat Sultan»'' (meaning ''Holy Sultan'' in Kazakh) — which is one of the epithets of Sufi sheikh Khawaja Ahmed Yasawi, author of ''Divan-i hikmet'' (“Book of Wisdom”), whose mausoleum is located in

. The airport's

, HSA, is derived from the airport's abbreviated name of Hazrat Sultan Airport.

Construction

The airport was constructed as a replacement for the former Turkistan Airport that is located to the east of the city. Construction work on HSIA airport began in May 2019, and was finalized in 2020, making it the fastest-constructed airport facility in the world.

Expected airlines and destinations

The first services to operate from the airport will be launched by Kazakhstan's carriers to

Nur-Sultan Astana, previously known as Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Akmola, and most recently Nur-Sultan, is the capital city of Kazakhstan. The city lies on the banks of the Ishim River in the north-central part of Kazakhstan, within the Akmola Region, tho ...

and Almaty and later to other regions of

Turkish Airlines Turkish Airlines ( Turkish: ''Türk Hava Yolları'') is the national flag carrier airline of Turkey. , it operates scheduled services to 340 destinations in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, making it the largest mainline carrier in the ...

also plans to launch three to four times weekly

Istanbul ) , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = 34000 to 34990 , area_code = +90 212 (European side) +90 216 (Asian side) , registration_plate = 34 , blank_name_sec2 = GeoTLD , blank_i ...

service in the initial stages, with a possibility of increasing frequency in the future. It is also planned to launch direct flights between Turkistan and the holy city of

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow ...

(Makkah) once every two days. Hazrat Sultan International Airport will also join the Kazakhstan's 11 airports that already operate under the

open skies The freedoms of the air are a set of commercial aviation rights granting a country's airlines the privilege to enter and land in another country's airspace. They were formulated as a result of disagreements over the extent of aviation liberali ...

aviation regime. The regime, which has been in effect since November 2019, which removes restrictions on a number of flights and gives a provision of fifth- degree freedom to foreign airlines

Facilities

The airport site is spread over .

Passenger main terminal

The passenger terminal is capable to handle up to three million passengers annually or has a capacity of 450 passengers per hour, and is equipped with a gallery landing with two gates to air-bridges and seven gates to apron buses.

Runway

The airport resides at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational surface (see Geodetic datum § Ver ...

of above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

Airlines and destinations

References

External links

* * {{authority control 2020 establishments in Kazakhstan Airports established in 2020 Airports in Kazakhstan Build–operate–transfer Turkistan Region