Tiksi West

Tiksi West is a large abandoned airfield in Sakha Republic, Russia located about 10 km west of Tiksi. It appears on old Department of Defense navigation charts, and satellite imagery as of 2000 continues to show patterns of disturbed ground. The history of the airfield is unknown but its role as a military facility was likely replaced by Tiksi Airport, which serves the area today.

See also

Tiksi

Tiksi (Russian: Ти́кси; Yakut: Тиксии, lit. a moorage place) is an urban locality (an urban-type settlement) and the administrative center of Bulunsky District in the Sakha Republic, Russia, located on the shore of the Buor-Khaya Gulf of the Laptev Sea, south of the delta of the Lena River. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 5,063.

History

In August 1901, Russian Arctic ship Zarya headed across the Laptev Sea, searching for the legendary Sannikov Land but was soon blocked by floating drift ice in the New Siberian Islands. During 1902, the attempts to reach Sannikov Land continued while Zarya was trapped in fast ice. Leaving the ship, Russian Arctic explorer Baron Eduard Toll and three companions vanished forever in November 1902 while traveling away from Bennett Island towards the south on loose ice floes. Zarya was finally moored close to Brusneva Island in the Tiksi Bay, never to leave the place again. The remaining members of the expedition returned to St. Petersburg, while Captain Fyodor Matisen went to Yakutsk.

Tiksi Airport

Tiksi Aerodrome (IATA: IKS, ICAO: UEST) is located 1 km (0.6 mi) northeast of Tiksi, Russia and was built in the 1950s as a staging base for Soviet Long Range Aviation bombers to reach the United States (as a so-called 'bounce' airdrome). It is used regularly by Tupolev Tu-95 aircraft in military exercises, including one in 1999, in which bombers practice travelling to the Canadian arctic. Two other nearby airfields known as Tiksi North and Tiksi West have been abandoned for decades, and are probable unusable according to satellite imagery.

According to Farecompare.com, a total of 50 daily seats are flown into Tiksi Airport every day. The only scheduled service to Tiksi is by an Antonov An-24 turboprop airplane.

2012 closure

The airport was closed without notice on October 1, 2012 by its owner, the Defense Ministry, due to the runway being unsafe and needing repair work. The closure was not coordinated with local or state government. Though the city was connected by winter roads, the loss of air service impaired the delivery of medicines, foods and other essential goods, and in February 2013 boilers in the city went out of service for an extended period. The issue rose to the highest levels of Russian government. Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev said in April 2013 "the Ministry of Defense committed a real mistake to jeopardize the existence of an entire village. This is an outrage.". Negotiations between the Defense Ministry and Yakutia government led to an agreement to Antonov An-24 service starting in June 2013. Reconstruction of the runway in several phases is scheduled for 2013 with completion by about 2015 or 2016.