Jurmala (airport)

Military airfield

The first records of the airfield are dated 1939. During World War II, it was used for the needs of the German military aviation Luftwaffe ^[1] . In the autumn of 1944, the Luftwaffe base Luftwaffen-Legion Lettland was located at the airfield ^[2] . During the Cold War , the USSR naval forces established in their place their own military airfield to control the airspace in the Baltic Sea area .

In 1975, the 668th naval aviation regiment of the Baltic Navy with Yak-28 bombers, which were in the hangars and were invisible from above, was based on the airfield. On the night of November 9, 1975, the aircraft, based at the airfield, conducted military operations in the Gulf of Riga against the anti-submarine ship “Watchdog” , at which the uprising began. Until 1989, 24 nuclear warheads were stored in warehouses. After the collapse of the USSR and before the withdrawal of Russian troops from Latvia (from 1991 to 1993), the 240th Guards Marine Assault Aviation Sevastopol-Berlin Regiment with 29 supersonic Su-24 bombers was based at the airfield ^[3] .

After the withdrawal of Russian troops, the airfield was taken over by the National Armed Forces of Latvia . It was planned to use the airfield as an alternative airfield in case of blocking of the Riga airport. A part of the territory, which was not intended for military use, was transferred to local authorities ( Smarde , Slampe , etc.). A part of the land was privatized, but a part of it was retained by the municipality for its own purposes, for example, the coastal district of Smarde used part of the territory where apartment buildings were located to create an industrial park . Subsequently, the National Armed Forces abandoned their original plans. The process of privatization of the territory was started, and so it finally fell into the possession of private individuals ^[4] .

Passenger Airport

In 2005, Tukums Airport Ltd. was established to restore the Tukums airfield, where half belonged to the village of Smārde , and the other half - KSAVIA. Smarde invested in the company's lands, and KSAVIA allocated funds to restore the airfield. According to data from Lursoft, the airfield of Tukums indirectly through the company KSAVIA almost completely belonged to the Latvian businessmen Konstantin Solodukh and Sergey Schukin ^[5] . In January 2010, the construction of a passenger terminal began at the former military airfield of Tukums Airport. The total investment by mid-2010 was four million lats . In autumn 2010, the airport’s runway was equipped with a special light signal system that allows airplanes to take off at night. The development plans of the airport were to attract low-cost airlines (for example Ryanair , WizzAir ) from Riga Airport ^[6] . The implementation of this plan was for a long time limited by the inability to reconcile the environmental impact of airport development ^[7] and the resistance of the local population. In the summer of 2015, the airport was denied certification ^[8] , possibly due to the unlawful actions of its owners ^[9] . In 2017, the owner of the company SIA Sky Port (formerly known as SIA Tukuma lidosta) changed, and Raimonds Kisiels became the strategic investor of the airport ^[10] .

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