BAKU AIRPORT HUB
Heydar Aliyev closed 2025 at 7.64 million passengers (+1.3% after 2024’s +31%), transit up 30% to 974,000, 75 international destinations — and in January 2026 the president ordered a concept to take capacity from 9 to 15–20 million.
Twenty-five kilometres northeast of the Flame Towers, GYD is the busiest airport in the Caucasus: 7.64 million passengers in 2025, 6.9 million of them international, on 75 destinations served by 40 foreign airlines. AZAL carried 4.16 million (3.36 million international); foreign carriers took 51.2% of the international flow. The top corridors are Istanbul, Tbilisi, Dubai, Ankara and Moscow; August 2025 set the all-time monthly record at nearly 840,000 passengers on 8,238 flights. The airport holds Skytrax’s “Best Airport in Central Asia and the CIS” again, and the H1 express bus reaches 28 May in about 40 minutes for 1.30 manat.
The strategic story is transit: 974,000 connecting passengers in 2025, +30% year on year, riding AZAL’s web — now 10 Central Asian cities on 48 weekly flights — and overflight traffic that grew 14% with 342,000 flights through Azerbaijani airspace. In January 2026 President Aliyev said capacity should rise to 15–20 million passengers and ordered a concept for a new terminal; meanwhile the network keeps adding spokes — Air Serbia from Belgrade launched in May 2026, Airblue from Lahore and Wizz Air from Bratislava followed into autumn.
THE TIO READ
GYD is one of the few airports where the terminal is the attraction — arrive early and walk the Zaha-adjacent architecture before security. Transit under four hours is painless airside; a longer layover justifies the e-visa and a 40-minute dash to the boulevard.
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