Kaluga Grabtsevo Airport was opened in 1970. He worked uninterruptedly for 30 years, in 2001 he was sent on a long "vacation". After the reconstruction, which took only a year, it started working again.
History of work
Grabtsevo International Airport was officially opened on June 1, 1970. The symbolic red ribbon was cut by the first secretary of the Kaluga Regional Committee of the CPSU A. A. Kandrenkov. The first aircraft to take off from the new airport was the An-24, which received the passengers who boarded and flew to Leningrad.
Class B, which Grabtsevo airport belongs to, can receive Tu-134, Yak-40 and An-24 aircraft, as well as lighter aircraft. There are no restrictions for accepting helicopters, the runway is always open for them.
The very first regular flights were Kaluga-Simferopol on Yak-40, Kaluga-Sochi, Kaluga-Leningrad on An-24.
6 years after the opening, on June 15, 1976, the first passenger Tu-134 from Sochi, Kaluga (Grabtsevo airport) received. Flights later became regular.
Directionsflight
After another 15 years, in 1991, flights were operated from the airport on An-24 aircraft:
- through Donetsk to Gelendzhik, 4 times a week;
- via Voronezh to Gelendzhik, 3 times a week;
- to Kaluga from Anapa, via Kharkov, every day;
- from Tambov to Leningrad, via Kaluga, daily;
- from Saransk to Minsk, via Kaluga, 3 times a week.
Yak-40 planes flew from Belgorod to Leningrad via Grabtsevo Airport. Flights - 2 times a week.
Miscellaneous events
In 2001, the funding that kept the airport running was cut off and it closed. And a few years later, it was completely deleted from the register of civil airfields in Russia.
In 2008, there was a message about the Kaluga branch of the Volkswagen plant, which is ready to allocate about half a million rubles for the reconstruction of the airport.
In 2009, in October, Grabtsevo Airport was withdrawn from federal ownership and transferred to the regional balance. At the same time, a statement appeared about the intention to re-commission it.
Produced work
In 2012, a plan for the general reconstruction of the airport was developed and submitted for state examination.
And on November 1, 2013, the Chinese company "Petro-HEHUA" LLC was chosen as the general contractor, which was entrusted with the task of carrying out the reconstruction work. The signed contract includedcarrying out work to repair the runway, taxiways and aircraft parking areas, as well as installing a drain and drainage network.
Public-private partnership scheme was used to finance the project. According to estimates, the total cost of the work performed was 1.71 billion rubles, of which more than half (913 million) were funds allocated from the federal budget. Changes have been made, and now Grabtsevo Airport can accept A-319, Boeing-737 and other aircraft, whose landing weight does not exceed 64 tons. The capacity of the airport has also increased - about 100,000 people a year.
By the end of 2014, the main reconstruction work came to an end, and on December 18, at 11 am, the first Boeing 737 aircraft landed at the renovated airport. It was a flight with no passengers.
On May 25, 2015, the airport was officially commissioned. At the same time, Grabtsevo was again entered into the register of civil airfields in Russia.
2015
After the official opening of the airport, a few days later, the sale of air tickets began. Today you can go from Kaluga to St. Petersburg (the plane flies three times a week) and to Sochi - once a week.
The airport management, represented by the general director, spoke in favor of laying routes to Gelendzhik, Simferopol and Mineralnye Vody. Aeroflot, UTair and Ural Airlines are seen as partners.
June 16 Kaluga airportA flight from St. Petersburg was accepted with 10 passengers on board. The plane took off on schedule at 8:40 am and an hour later, without delay, landed in Kaluga.
4 days later, on June 20, the first flight from Kaluga to Sochi was made, which was also successful.
On July 16, the first flight was sent to Crimea, and on August 14, the airport was officially given international status, with the right to receive and send international flights of Russian and foreign airlines.
In early September, 1 international flight was accepted on the route Braunschweig-Kaluga, on which the German delegation of the board of directors of the Volkswagen company arrived.
Directions Kaluga-St. Petersburg, Kaluga-Sochi, Kaluga-Mineralnye Vody and Kaluga-Anapa fell into the line, which will be developed at the expense of allocated subsidized funds.
In early January of this year, a Russian airline on a modern domestic aircraft made a flight to Nish, Serbia.
Flights from Grabtsevo. Airport: flight schedule
To buy a ticket for a plane departing from Kaluga, you can use three standard methods: through ticket offices, from distributors, or on your own, via the Internet. Today, thanks to a subsidy allocated from the state budget, the price of a Kaluga-St. Petersburg flight should not exceed 3,000 rubles.
You can get from the city center to the airport using bus number 4, running along the route "Square Mira-Grabtsevo".
For all questions, you can visit the airport website orcall +74842770007.
Interesting facts
Journalists in 2015 unconditionally recognized Grabtsevo Airport as the best airport of regional significance.
For almost 15 years, while the air harbor was in a mothballed state, bus number 4 continued to go to it.
In the coming years, it is planned to open lines to Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan). Estimated flight time will be no more than 4 hours, and the ticket price will not exceed 12,000 rubles.
Whatever the forecasts for the future, rosy or not, the residents of Kaluga and the Kaluga region are extremely happy that they have their own handsome airport, equipped according to European standards, with attentive and caring staff.
We wish the airport further development!
