Tallinn Airport

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Tallinn Airport
IATA: TLL - ICAO: EETN
Summary
Airport type		Public
Operator		Estonian Government
Serves		Tallinn
Elevation AMSL		131 ft (39.93 m)
Coordinates		59°42′54″N, 24°32′49″E
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
08/26	10,070	3,070	Asphalt/Concrete

airBaltic Fokker F50 at Tallinn Airport

Tallinn Airport or Ülemiste Airport (IATA: TLL, ICAO: EETN; Estonian: Tallinna lennujaam) is the largest airport in Estonia and home base of the national airline Estonian Air. Tallinn Airport is open to both domestic and international flights. It is located approximately 4 kilometers from the city center of Tallinn on the eastern shore of Lake Ülemiste.

The airport has a single asphalt-concrete runway that is 3070 meters long and 45 meters wide, four taxiways and eight terminal gates.

1.4 million passengers travelled via Tallinn Airport in 2005, an increase by 40.5% from 2004^[1].

1 Terminal building
2 History
3 Renaming
4 Airlines
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Terminal building

There are a small number of vendors in the terminal building, including a cafe with light snacks and a duty free shop. The terminal area also contains a post office, telephone services, and free wired/wireless Internet access. Car rental, travel agency, currency exchange, and porter services are also available from the terminal. There are 2 bus stops in front of terminal, one stop is front of departure doors(bus comes from city center) and second one is front of arrival doors(bus goes to city center).

[edit] History

The building of Tallinn Airport started in 1932, and the airport was opened officially on 20 September 1936, although the airport had been operational a good while before the official opening. Between 1945 and 1989 Aeroflot was the only airline that served Tallinn Airport. Regular flights with jet planes started in 1962. A new terminal building was built in the late 1970, and the runway was also lengthened then. The first foreign airline that did regular flights from Tallinn was SAS in the autumn of 1989. The terminal building was modernized in 1999.

The airport has also served military uses as an interceptor aircraft base. It was home to 384 IAP (384th Interceptor Aircraft Regiment) which flew MiG-23P aircraft.

[edit] Renaming

Estonian Air Boeing 737-500 at Tallinn Airport

After the death of former president of Estonia Lennart Meri in March 14, 2006, the journalist Argo Ideon from Eesti Ekspress proposed to honour the president's memory by naming Tallinn Airport after him - "Tallinna Lennart Meri Rahvusvaheline Lennujaam" (Lennart Meri International Airport), drawing parallels with JFK Airport, Charles de Gaulle Airport, etc^[2]. Ideon's article also mentioned the fact that Meri himself had shown concern for the condition of the then Soviet-era construction (in one memorable case Meri, having arrived from Japan, led the group of journalists that were expecting him, to the airport's toilets to do the interview there, in order to point out the shoddy condition of the facilities^[3]).

The name change was discussed on a board meeting^[4], but nothing official has come out of the proposal yet.

[edit] Airlines

Aero Airlines (Helsinki)
airBaltic (Riga, Vilnius)
Airest (charter airline)
Avies (Kärdla, Kuressaare)
Czech Airlines (Prague)
easyJet (Berlin-Schönefeld, London-Stansted)
Estonian Air (Barcelona, Berlin-Tegel(ends on January 8, 2007), Brussels, Copenhagen, Dublin, Dubrovnik (Seasonal), Frankfurt, Hamburg (Seasonal), Kiev-Boryspil, London-Gatwick, Milan-Malpensa, Moscow-Sheremetyevo, Oslo, Paris-Charles de Gaulle (Seasonal), Stockholm-Arlanda, Simferopol (Seasonal))
Finnair (Helsinki)
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
- KLM Cityhopper (Amsterdam)
LOT Polish Airlines (Warsaw)
Lufthansa (Frankfurt)
Norwegian Air Shuttle (Oslo)
SAS Scandinavian Airlines (Stockholm-Arlanda)