Kobozev Airport
Kobozev Airport (Russian: aeroport Kobozev; in Nurzhan still "the old aeroport", staryy aeroport) was the busiest civil airport of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic. It opened in 1962 in place of a grass field of the 1930s, on the Chu plain about 12 kilometers north-west of the center of Kobozev (now Nurzhan), away from the refinery and the freight depot. A concrete runway of about 3.2 kilometers was laid in 1974 for the Tu-154, and the modernist terminal of 1968 carried the name KOBOZEV in red letters on its roof. The Iradi directorate of Aeroflot flew from it to Moscow, Tashkent, Frunze, Alma-Ata and Novosibirsk, and it handled about 800,000 passengers in 1989.[1]
The airport closed in the spring of 1992, during the First Iradi Civil War, when the forces of the Socialist Republic of Irad took it over for the siege of Talas and its jet fuel ran out. Retreating SRI troops cratered the runway before Kobozev fell in August 1992. US forces used the site only as a helicopter landing zone until December 1992 and then concentrated at Talas, and the expansion of 1993–1996 made Talas Air Base the territory's one airfield. The runway was never repaired.[1][2] The old apron is now the Aeroport car market (Aeroport avtobazary), where imported used cars are sold; the Aeroport district and its minibus terminus keep the name, and the 1968 terminal stands gutted. The site was rebuilt in 2013–2016 as Nurzhan International Airport.[2]
References
- ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2021). 'Flying Without a Flag: Civil Aviation in an Unrecognized Territory.' Vol. 17, pp. 133–152.
- ^ vNurzhan (2022). 'Sixty years of the old aeroport.' Nurzhan.