Chelyabinsk Balandino Airport (named after Igor Kurchatov) CEK / USCC

Federal-class international airport 18 km north of Chelyabinsk; a Red Wings Airlines base and a focus city for Ural Airlines and Yamal Airlines. Carries the honorary name 'named after Igor Kurchatov' (nuclear physicist born in what is now Chelyabinsk Oblast), added in June 2019 under Russia's nationwide airport-renaming program; a Kurchatov monument was unveiled airside in November 2019. Passenger traffic crossed 2 million for the first time in 2024, per independent press reports in late November 2024; airport management separately cited about 1.47 million passengers through roughly the first nine months of 2025 (October 2025 statement). A precise, independently confirmed full-year 2025 total is not available in current public reporting; figures of 2.2 million and +31.5% international growth sometimes attributed to 2025 are unconfirmed and should be treated with caution. Only one active runway (09/27) is documented in current sources even though some Russian references cite a second, older parallel strip; treat any second-runway claim as unconfirmed. As at many Russian airports, Balandino has seen brief Rosaviatsia-ordered flight restrictions during regional drone-threat alerts (flight cancellations in August 2025; a roughly three-hour halt on 31 August 2026), each resolved same-day with normal operations resuming. Russia's antimonopoly regulator (FAS) issued the airport a formal warning in December 2025.