Construction and early operations The airport was constructed as a replacement for the former Kokshetau Airport that was located to the north of the city as a small grass airfield with a relatively short runway. The facility opened in and was formerly known as
Kokchetav Airport,
Kokshetau was known as Kokchetav at the time. It was renamed Kokshetau Airport in 1993; "International" was added to the name in 2013. In 1960,
Aeroflot was flying daily
Ilyushin Il-12 jet service on a round trip routing of Alma-Ata (now
Almaty) –
Balkhash –
Karaganda – Akmolinsk (now
Astana) – Kokchetav (now Kokshetau) – Sverdlovsk (now
Yekaterinburg). Also in 1963/1964,
Aeroflot was operating 761 service on a round trip routing of Karaganda – Tselinograd (now Astana) – Kokchetav – Kustanai (now
Kostanay) –
Chelyabinsk – Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) with
Lisunov Li-2 aircraft.
Aeroflot served the airport during the mid 1964s with
Ilyushin Il-14 aircraft flying a routing of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) –
Kurgan – Petropavlovsk (now
Petropavl) – Kokchetav – Tselinograd – Karaganda – Alma-Ata. In 1961,
Aeroflot had service to
Moscow via stops at Petropavlovsk, Kurgan, Sverdlovsk,
Kazan flying an
Ilyushin Il-14 (with total flight time of about 15 hrs.). In the early 1980s, the airfield was one of the reserve landing sites for the
reusable low Earth orbital
spacecraft system
Buran.
Development since the 2000s Kokshetau Airport served as a
hub for
Air Kokshetau from 2002 to 2008. In 2004,
Aero Flight, a
German airline, was operating international non-stop seasonal service between June and August from
Frankfurt (
IATA:
FRA), Germany to
Kokshetau. In 2010, the airport underwent major reconstruction, including reconstruction of the passenger terminal building and modernization of the runway. Renovation and modernization of the airport was completed in 2013. The new passenger terminal opened on October 21, 2013, and was also granted an international status. The first new airline to start international scheduled flights after the comprehensive reconstruction of the runway and passenger terminal from Kokshetau was
Transaero operating
Boeing 737-700 jets between Kokshetau and
Moscow—Vnukovo (
IATA:
VKO), Russia. This lasted until September 2018, when
S7 Airlines cancelled the flight. In late-May 2019,
IrAero resumed summer season service to Moscow and operated a flight to
Moscow—Zhukovsky (
IATA:
ZIA), Russia on the
Sukhoi Superjet 100 aircraft On 12 March 2020,
FlyArystan launched three weekly flights to its hub at
Almaty using
Airbus A320-200 aircraft. On 22 July 2021,
SCAT Airlines introduced thrice-weekly subsidized inter-republican air services to
Hazret Sultan International Airport in
Turkistan Region. ==Facilities==