Tashkent International Airport

Islam Karimov Tashkent International Airport (Islom Karimov Toshkent Xalqaro Aeroporti) is the main international airport of Uzbekistan and the third busiest airport in Central Asia (after Almaty International Airport and Nursultan Nazarbayev International Airport in Astana, both in Kazakhstan). It is located 12 km from the center of Tashkent. It was named after Islam Karimov, the first president of independent Uzbekistan, in office from 1991 until his death in 2016.

History
This ICAO Category II airport is the primary hub of Uzbekistan Airways, the largest international airport in Uzbekistan, and the busiest in Central Asia. The airport comprises two terminals: Terminal 2 receives international flights, and Terminal 3 is for domestic traffic.

In March 1995, Uzbekistan Airways started flights from Tashkent to New York via Riga. It used Airbus A310s on the route. Terminal 2 was rebuilt in 2001, and renovations were completed in 2018. It has a capacity of 1000 passengers/hour and serves more than two million passengers per year. Facilities include waiting lounges, CIP and VIP halls, restaurants and bars, currency exchange offices, duty-free shops, airlines ticket counters and sales offices, and a 24-hour pharmacy.

Terminal 3 opened in 2011 with a capacity of 400 passengers per hour. The two terminals are separated by the runway, requiring passengers transiting from international to domestic flights and vice versa to exit the airport in order to transfer between them. In July 2017, Uzbekistan Airways began offering nonstop service to New York using its Boeing 787 fleet.

The government of Uzbekistan is planning to relocate Tashkent Airport to a new site by 2030.

Incidents
In 2023, there was a big fire at the airport and a warehouse exploded.