Vnukovo International Airport
international airport serving Moscow, Russia
Vnukovo International Airport (Internal code: ВНК, IATA: VKO, ICAO: UUWW) is a dual-runway international airport located in Vnukovo District, 28 km (17 mi) southwest of the centre of Moscow, Russia. It is one of the four major airports that serve Moscow, along with Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky.
In 2019, the airport handled 24.01 million passengers, representing an increase of 12% compared to the previous year. Vnukovo was the eleventh-busiest airport in Europe in 2021 but had a strong decline in traffic and dropped to 30th place in 2022 as a consequence of sanctions following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As of 2025 it is the 3rd busiest airport in Russia and Post-Soviet states as well as the 41st-busiest airport in Europe. The airport was formally named "Vnukovo Andrei Tupolev International Airport", after Andrei Tupolev.
History
Vnukovo is Moscow's oldest operating airport. It was opened and used for military operations during the Second World War but became a civilian facility after the war. Its construction was approved by the Soviet government in 1937 because the older Khodynka Aerodrome (located much closer to the city centre, but closed by the 1980s) was becoming overloaded.
On 15 September 1956, the Tupolev Tu-104 jetliner made its first passenger flight from Moscow Vnukovo to Irkutsk via Omsk.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Vnukovo International Airport” is international airport serving Moscow, Russia. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Vnukovo, International and Airport, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “international airport serving Moscow, Russia” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
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 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q273462. Authority coordinates are 55.596, 37.267. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vnukovo 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.