Kualanamu International Airport
airport in Indonesia
Kualanamu International Airport (IATA: KNO, ICAO: WIMM) — often spelled as Kuala Namu and informally abbreviated KNIA — is an international airport serving Medan, Indonesia, and other parts of North Sumatra. It is located in Deli Serdang Regency, 23 kilometres (14 mi) east of downtown Medan. Kualanamu is the third-largest airport in Indonesia after Jakarta Soekarno–Hatta and Bandung Kertajati, and the fifth busiest airport in Indonesia as of 2018, as well as the first Indonesian airport to receive a four-star rating from Skytrax.
The airport was opened to the public on 25 July 2013, handling all flights and services from Polonia International Airport, an airport located at the centre of Medan which was deemed dangerous. The airport was built on the former site of an oil palm plantation of company Perkebunan Nusantara II Tanjung Morawa.
The airport is expected to become the new international transit center in Sumatra and the western part of Indonesia. It is part of the Indonesian central government's "Masterplan to Accelerate and Expand Economic Development in Indonesia" (MP3EI) program. The airport was also considered as a candidate for ASEAN Single Aviation Market (ASEAN-SAM), an open skies policy among member countries in the Southeast Asia region which started in 2015.
Etymology
The name of the airport was reported to be a suggestion from the people of Karo to the government and later granted by the Ministry of Transportation. The name consists of two words: 'Kuala,' a Malay and Indonesian word for 'river mouth;' and 'Namu' or 'Namo,' the Karonese for 'deep sea.' Thus, 'Kualanamu' means 'meeting point.' Kualanamu is one of the very few airports in the country not named after Indonesian heroes.
“Kualanamu International Airport” enters the record as airport in Indonesia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kualanamu, International and Airport can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4273083. Authority coordinates are 3.642, 98.878. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2018, 2013 and 2015.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kualanamu International Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.