Vladivostok International Airport sits at Knevichi, beside the town of Artyom. It is about 45 kilometers north of the city, a long way out of town. It began as a military airfield and started taking civil traffic in the 1950s. For years it was the aviation gateway to the Soviet Far East, a vast and thinly settled region where flying is often the only practical way to travel.
Vladivostok was a closed city for much of the Soviet era, home to the Pacific Fleet. Naval secrecy kept it off limits to outsiders, and foreigners could not use the airport at all until 1992. Everything changed for the 2012 APEC summit, a meeting of Pacific Rim economies that Russia hosted here. A new terminal opened and an express rail link was built.
Vladivostok then became the showcase for Russia's Far East policy. A free port cut trade paperwork, and simple electronic visas drew Chinese, South Korean, and Japanese visitors. The airport is home to Aurora Airlines, formed in 2013 by merging Vladivostok Air and SAT Airlines. Since 2022 its European links have gone and its foreign routes reach Asia only, so the long domestic flights to Moscow remain its lifeline.