About Tbilisi International Airport

Tbilisi International Airport (TBS) handles most of Georgia's scheduled international air traffic and is the home base of the national carrier. If you're flying into the country, there's a good chance you'll land here.

The airport sits on the southeastern edge of the capital, roughly 17 kilometres from the centre, and its position between Europe and Asia has long made it a natural stop for travellers and airlines crossing between the two. It has come a long way from the modest terminal that opened in the 1950s, growing over seven decades into a modern hub that now handles millions of passengers a year — growth that has gone hand in hand with the rise of tourism to Georgia over the past decade.

The first terminal opened in 1952, built in the heavy Stalinist style of the era. It still stands today and now serves as a VIP lounge rather than a working terminal — a piece of mid-century architecture left over from the airport's earliest days. A second, larger terminal followed in 1968, designed in the International Style by the architect Vladimer Beridze and his team; it too has since been retired from public service.

By 1981 the airport had become one of the busiest in the Soviet Union — the twelfth largest, with around 1.48 million passengers a year. The bigger transformation, though, came after Georgian independence. In October 2005 the Turkish operator TAV Airports Holding — today part of France's Groupe ADP — took over the airport under a long-term concession and set about building the terminal passengers use now. That concession has since been extended, keeping the airport in TAV's hands into the late 2020s.

In 2015 the Tbilisi City Assembly gave the airport its official name, in honour of the medieval Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli. Two years later, in 2017, a new arrivals terminal opened, adding about 12,000 square metres as part of a roughly US$33 million project and raising the airport's capacity to around 3.5 million passengers a year. Demand has since outpaced even that expansion — in 2024 the airport handled 4.75 million passengers, comfortably above the level it had been rebuilt for.

Everything now runs through a single passenger terminal serving both international and domestic flights, open around the clock. More than 45 airlines fly from Tbilisi, with direct routes to over 25 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Gulf. Alongside the flag carrier Georgian Airways, the airport is a base for MyWay Airlines.

Tbilisi is one of three international airports in Georgia, alongside Batumi on the Black Sea coast and Kutaisi in the west. It's comfortably the largest and busiest of the three, and the main point of entry for long-haul and full-service carriers, while the other two lean more towards seasonal and low-cost traffic.

Inside, you'll find the usual mix of a modern airport — check-in and passport control, duty-free and a handful of shops, cafés and restaurants, ATMs and currency exchange, car rental desks and free Wi-Fi. It's compact enough to be easy to find your way around, which helps at an airport where a lot of flights arrive and depart in the early hours.

For most visitors it's the first and last stop in the country, so it's built around moving people through quickly. The city centre is a short drive away — a taxi, the airport bus or a pre-booked transfer will have you downtown in well under an hour. For what's inside the terminal, ways to reach the city, or live arrival and departure times, follow the links below.