Gomel Airport GME / UMGG

Belarus's busiest regional gateway after Minsk, but no official year-end passenger total is published by Belaeronavigatsia or Belstat for Gomel: the 74,000 figure used here is drawn from a Belarusian state-TV (STV) report citing 'more than 74,000 passengers and 500-plus aircraft handled' over 2024 — a different, larger figure than the 64,500 passengers Belavia's own general director gave via BELTA for Gomel and Brest airports COMBINED over the same year — so treat 74,000 as an approximate, press-derived count rather than a confirmed statistic. Belavia is the sole scheduled carrier, flying Moscow-Sheremetyevo, Moscow-Vnukovo and Saint Petersburg plus seasonal leisure charters to Antalya and Sharm el-Sheikh, with a resumed (not new) Hurghada charter due to restart 27 October 2026; the former hub carrier Gomelavia ceased operations in February 2011. The single asphalt runway (10/28, 2,569 m) has no ILS - approaches are non-precision, aided by the co-located GOL VOR - so expect weather diversions in low visibility. Wikipedia records that Russian forces used the airport in 2022 to stage air strikes into Ukraine, and separately the airport's own operator, Belaeronavigatsia, has itself been under EU, UK, Swiss and Canadian sanctions since June 2021 for its role in the Ryanair Flight 4978 diversion. As with the rest of Belarusian civil aviation, EU/UK bans on Belarusian carriers using their airspace and airports, a US ban on ticket sales to and from Belarus, and an FAA prohibition on US aviation interests overflying Belarus all remain in force following the May 2021 Ryanair incident, and Ukraine has closed its airspace to Belarusian traffic since February 2022 - though the US did remove Belavia itself (a separate entity from Belaeronavigatsia) from its sanctions list on 4 November 2025. Gomel itself has never carried Western scheduled or charter traffic to lose.