Sochi International Airport AER / URSS

Sochi is Basel Aero's flagship field and the Black Sea coast's busiest passenger gateway, but it is no longer the group's only operating airport: Krasnodar/Pashkovsky reopened to civil traffic on 11 September 2025 and Gelendzhik — also on the Black Sea coast — followed on 18 July 2025, while Anapa/Vityazevo and a dozen-plus other southern and border-region Russian airports remain closed under the restrictions in force since 24 February 2022. Sochi itself is not exempt from disruption: Rosaviatsia has repeatedly ordered brief precautionary ground stops here through 2026 for drone or air-defense activity, including one alongside Gelendzhik in the early hours of 2 September 2026; each has been lifted within hours with no reported change to the airport's operating status. Mountains ring the field on three sides, so both runways are flown seaward on approach regardless of which end is in use. No ILS is confirmed installed on either runway in available records, so both runway ILS entries are left blank; unverified reports of a Russian-made import-substitution landing aid at Sochi could not be confirmed and are not represented here. Full-year 2025 traffic was reported at about 12.5 million passengers, down from a confirmed 13,725,979 in 2024, even as international volume reportedly set a record of around 1.8 million (+8% y/y, led by Istanbul, Antalya and Yerevan) — read the overall dip as capacity/demand rebalancing as neighboring Black Sea airports reopen, not as any change in Sochi's own operating status.