Khon Kaen Airport guide

Khon Kaen Airport (ICAO: VTUK) is the main gateway to Thailand's northeastern Isan region. It sits in Ban Pet subdistrict, about 2 km from Highway 12, and also serves the neighbouring provinces of Maha Sarakham and Kalasin. The Ministry of Transport owns the airport and the Department of Airports runs it.

The airport opened on 6 February 1963 with a Thai Airways DC-3 flight carrying 28 passengers on a multi-stop route through Isan. It replaced an earlier airfield in the middle of the city, which was too small to expand and lay among homes. It became a customs airport on 1 September 1991.

The single asphalt runway, 03/21, is 3,050 m long and 45 m wide, long enough for large jets. Three taxiways connect it to two aprons. The main apron in front of the terminal holds up to 12 Airbus A320 or Boeing 737 aircraft, and a second apron beside the old building takes two Boeing 737-400s. The four-storey terminal has about 44,500 square metres of usable space and can process about 2,500 passengers an hour.

Traffic is almost all domestic, with Bangkok the busiest route and links to Chiang Mai and Phuket. Passenger numbers grew by about 20 percent a year from 2013 and reached roughly two million in 2017. A Department of Airports expansion plan aims to lift capacity to 5 million passengers a year.