St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport Guide: Russia’s Northern Gateway
St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport is Russia's second city gateway, with two long runways and a 2013 terminal. History, runways, routes and access explained.
By The Aviation Hub
7 min read
Updated October 20, 2026 
Pulkovo Airport lies about 14 miles (23 km) south of the centre of St Petersburg, near the Pulkovo Heights where the city’s famous observatory stands. It is the main airport of Russia’s second city and one of the busiest in the country after the Moscow trio. St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport handled around 20.9 million passengers in 2024, almost all of them on domestic and former Soviet routes since western sanctions closed European skies in 2022. Two long parallel runways and a single modern terminal serve a network built around Aeroflot’s Rossiya subsidiary.
St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport at a Glance
The codes are LED and ULLI, the IATA code a relic of Leningrad, the city’s name from 1924 to 1991. The field sits at 24 m (78 ft) above sea level on gently rising ground south of the Moskovsky district. It has two runways, 10R/28L and 10L/28R, and one passenger terminal, the Terminal 1 complex that opened in December 2013 and absorbed the old Pulkovo 1 building.
Northern Capital Gateway, formed in 2009, has operated the airport since 2010 under a 30 year concession, originally a partnership of VTB Capital, Fraport and Greece’s Copelouzos Group with Qatar Investment Authority later taking a quarter. A presidential decree in November 2023 stripped the foreign investors of voting control and Fraport sold out in 2025. Aeroflot and Rossiya Airlines treat St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport as a hub, with Smartavia, Pobeda, Ural Airlines and Nordwind also based or prominent. Parking and services are listed on the airport’s official website.
A Short History of Pulkovo
Construction of an aerodrome south of Leningrad began in January 1931 and the first flights operated on 24 June 1932. The airport took its name from the nearby Shosseynaya railway station and served domestic routes only. During the Siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944 the airfield sat on the front line and saw no civil flying at all.
The renaming to Pulkovo came on 24 April 1973, the same year the distinctive Pulkovo 1 terminal opened with its five glazed cupolas, which locals called the five glasses. The pre war building became Pulkovo 2 and handled international flights for four decades. In 1974 an Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-18 crashed after an engine fire on departure, killing all 118 aboard.
The concession to Northern Capital Gateway in 2010 unlocked the biggest rebuild in the airport’s history. The new Terminal 1 was built from November 2010 and opened on 3 December 2013, with all flights consolidated there by February 2014. The old Pulkovo 1 was reconstructed and linked to the new building as a domestic extension, and Pulkovo 2 was retired.
Runways at St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport
The longer runway, 10R/28L, is 3,780 m (12,402 ft) long and 60 m wide, with a cement concrete surface. The parallel runway, 10L/28R, is 3,397 m (11,146 ft) long and also 60 m wide and concrete. The spacing allows the airport to use one for arrivals and one for departures during peaks, and both can take the largest aircraft in service.
Westerly winds off the Gulf of Finland mean the 28 direction is used most of the time, with aircraft landing from the east over the suburbs of Pushkin and departing towards the gulf. Winter brings snow and ice from November to March and the airport runs a large fleet of sweepers and de icing rigs to keep both runways open.
Operations have been interrupted since 2022 by drone activity, most notably on 31 January 2024 when flights stopped for about 80 minutes during an attack on a nearby oil refinery. In October 2025 an Azerbaijan Airlines Airbus A320 left the runway after an emergency landing with a landing gear fault, and all 155 occupants were evacuated safely.
Terminals and Airlines
Terminal 1 is a long, low building by Grimshaw Architects with a folded golden ceiling that echoes the domes of the city’s churches. Check in, security and the main shopping area are in the new hall, with international gates to one side and domestic gates extending into the renovated Pulkovo 1 block. Rows of check in desks and a mix of jet bridges and bus gates handle the flow.
Rossiya Airlines is the home carrier, flying Airbus A319s and A320s, Boeing 737-800s and the Russian built Superjet 100 on domestic and regional routes, with Aeroflot’s own A320 family jets on the Moscow shuttle and wide bodies on some leisure routes. Pobeda, the Aeroflot low cost arm, and S7 Airlines, Ural Airlines, Smartavia, Nordwind and Azimuth fill out the domestic schedule.
Foreign airlines are now mostly from the former Soviet states, the Middle East and Asia. Turkish Airlines, Pegasus, Emirates, flydubai, Belavia, Uzbekistan Airways, Azerbaijan Airlines, China Eastern and Hainan Airlines have all served St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport since 2022. Finnair, Lufthansa, British Airways and the other European carriers that once dominated international flying are absent.
Routes and Destinations
Moscow is the dominant route, carrying more than 5 million passengers a year across the three Moscow airports with flights every half hour at peak times. Sochi, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Krasnodar, Kazan and Mineralnye Vody follow, with Kaliningrad notable because the exclave can be reached only by air without crossing the European Union.
Before 2022 the busiest international routes were Antalya, Frankfurt and Munich. Antalya remains a heavyweight, and Istanbul, Dubai, Minsk, Tashkent, Samarkand, Yerevan and Baku have grown as connecting points to the wider world. Aeroflot’s seasonal flights to Phuket, at around 5,000 miles (8,000 km), are the longest scheduled services, with Bangkok and Sanya close behind. Traffic peaks in summer, when the White Nights draw domestic tourists, and again around the New Year holidays.
Getting to and from St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport
There is no rail link. City bus 39 and the express 39Ex run from the terminal to Moskovskaya metro station on Line 2 in around 20 to 30 minutes, and bus 82Ex serves Prospekt Veteranov on Line 1. From Moskovskaya the metro reaches Nevsky Prospekt in about 20 minutes. The combined fare is well under 200 roubles (roughly £2), making bus and metro the cheapest sensible option.
By road the airport sits on Pulkovo Highway, which runs straight north into Moskovsky Prospekt and the centre in 30 to 50 minutes depending on traffic. Official taxis and the Yandex Go app charge around 1,200 to 2,000 roubles (roughly £10 to £17) to the city. Short and long stay parking sits in front of the terminal, with a multi storey car park connected by a covered walkway. A long discussed Aeroexpress style rail link has never been built.
Spotting and Photography
St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport offers good views for spotters willing to walk. The fields and lanes near the 28L threshold at the eastern end give low arrivals on the main runway. Roads near the western end work when easterly winds bring arrivals in from the gulf side. Inside the terminal the departure lounge windows look across the main apron.
The fleet mix is distinctive. Rossiya’s Superjets and Aeroflot’s 777-300ERs share the ramp with Russian registered Airbus and Boeing jets that no longer visit the west, and the occasional Ilyushin Il-96 of the government flight. Emirates Boeing 777s and Chinese wide bodies are the heavy foreign visitors.
Russia treats photography near airports with suspicion and the current security situation makes the police more alert than ever. Stay on public land well back from the fence, keep documents to hand and expect to be questioned. Drone flying anywhere near St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport is strictly illegal.
What Comes Next
The operator has long planned a further expansion of Terminal 1 to lift capacity, with more gates and stands. Work stalled after 2022 as the foreign partners left, and investment now depends on the state and domestic banks. A government proposal for an open skies regime allowing foreign airlines to fly from European points to Pulkovo was framed before the war and is dormant.
In the shorter term the airport is focused on resilience, with upgraded de icing, more domestic gates and new routes to China, the Gulf and Central Asia. The return of European airlines, whenever it comes, will decide whether the airport can grow much beyond its current 21 million passengers.
St Petersburg Pulkovo Airport is a fine modern airport serving a shrunken map, and its future rests on geopolitics more than engineering. Compare it with other Russian and European hubs on the Airports of the World map.
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