The first airport in Chișinău officially opened on 19 September 1944, with the launch of lines to Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev, Minsk, the Caucasus and Crimea. In the 1950s, many lines were opened to the main cities of the USSR.

The current airport located south of the city opened in 1960. Attendance at the new airport is triple that of the old airport in 1959. From the late 1960s, the airport mainly hosts flights allowing to reach Moscow non stop.

A new terminal building was built in 1974. The airport now has 800,000 passengers a year and serves 80 cities, all located in the USSR. On September 13, 1990, the first international line to Frankfurt was opened.

After the fall of the USSR and the independence of Moldova, the activity of the airport declines, because of the rupture of the economic ties with the other former Soviet republics and the civil war in Transnistria. In 1993, the airport even temporarily found itself without activities. On May 31, 1995, the airport "is reborn" and receives the status of international airport.

In 2002, the airport and its surroundings are fully modernized: the terminal is renovated and a new terminal is built. Heating, ventilation, electrical systems, baggage handling, control gantries and passenger information were redone, along with the access road and the water treatment plant. It is then possible from Chișinău to go to 18 countries. In 2011, the airport is voted "CIS best airport" and its annual attendance exceeds one million travelers.

In 2017, Dacii Group's new company, Dacii Moldovei, established its main hub.

To access information about the airport, click here.

History

In the shelter of the Kis-Jenő fort, the Moldavian village of Chișinău was built around the 15th century, where farmers and wine-growers in the surrounding area marketed. Historians have no definite answer as to when the city's history begins, but the name Chișinău is mentioned in a charter dated April 25, 1420.

It is likely that the history of the city begins before this time but it was not distinguishable from the surrounding villages. A number of documents dating from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries present the town as a simple village in Eastern Moldavia with no notable political and economic role. In the old maps of the principality of Moldova, Chișinău does not appear, whereas there are other cities. However, the village is gaining importance over the centuries because land disputes over sources, windmills or water, initially arbitrated by the Moldovan magistrates of Lăpușna, capital of Ţinut (Moldovan county) on which depended Chișinău, they are then by the princes of Moldova themselves, and finally by the Moldavian Assembly. Moreover, the extension of the village beyond its limits causes the complaints of the neighboring villagers.

In 1789, the city of Chisinau experienced a significant fire to the point that part of the population is forced to migrate. Chisinau, presented by travelers as a rural-looking medieval town had already burned in 1739 and 1788 and will burn again in 1793. Despite the fires, irregular streets and homes scattered, despite the Russo-Turkish wars, despite the rivalries, the city continues to develop and encompasses surrounding villages.

The real development of the city begins with the Russian domination. The Treaty of Bucharest of 1812 sealed the partition of Moldavia and the annexation of its eastern half by the Russian Empire making it its Bessarabian government, whose Chișinău became the capital under the Russian name of Kishinev. In fact, to give an imperial capital to their new province, the Russian authorities add 5 neighboring villages to the village of Chișinău. This regrouping in a single municipality is accompanied by the construction, on the plateau above the old Moldavian town, of a new checkerboard town populated by settlers from all over the Russian Empire.

During the 19th century, the Russians built barracks, administrative buildings, a Russian cathedral and the railway.

The population of the city remained very cosmopolitan until 1940 (with many white Russian refugees, Jews, Greeks fleeing the USSR, Ukrainians fleeing famine and Armenians). Deportations and massacres of 1940-1950 by fascist regimes Romanian and Stalinist Soviet decreased the population; this decrease was compensated from 1945 by the influx of Russians, Ukrainians and Jews from all over the USSR and Moldavians from the surrounding countryside.

The city is today the largest in the country. It is an important industrial and tertiary center (shops, services).