Tallinn Airport () is the largest international airport in Estonia. The airport is also officially called Lennart Meri Tallinn Airport () after the former president of Estonia Lennart Meri.Eesti Ekspress 19 March 2009:Lennart Meri nimi lennujaama katusel maksnuks miljon krooni
The airport is located southeast of the city centre of Estonian capital Tallinn, on the eastern shore of Lake Ülemiste. Until 2009, it was known as Tallinn Ülemiste Airport. The airport has a single asphalt/concrete runway, 08/26, that is and large enough to handle wide-bodied aircraft such as the Boeing 747, six taxiways and seventeen terminal gates.
History Early development Prior to the establishment of the present airport in Ülemiste area, Lasnamäe Airfield was the primary airport of Tallinn, serving as a base for Aeronaut airline. After Aeronaut went bankrupt in 1928, air service was continued by Deruluft, which used Nehatu instead, from the centre of Tallinn. The first seaplane harbour on the shores of Lake Ülemiste was built 1928 to 1929 in order to serve Finnish seaplanes. The use of this harbour ended in World War II. On 26 March 1929 Riigikogu passed an expropriation act in order to establish a public airport. of land was expropriated from Dvigatel joint-stock company and another was expropriated from descendants of Vagner. 10 million sents were paid to land-owners as indemnity. Land leveling and renovation works took another 5 million sents.
The building of Tallinn Airport started on 16 November 1931, and the first test landing was commenced by captain Reissar piloting Estonian Air Force Avro 594 Avian, tail number 120. The airport was opened officially on 20 September 1936, although it had been operational a good while before the official opening. LOT Polish Airlines, which commenced its first passenger flight from Tallinn on 18 August 1932 with Fokker F.VIIb/3m from Lasnamäe Airfield, later relocated the flights to Tallinn Airport and in 1935 the airport had 6 arrivals and departures on average every day. In April 1935 a ramp for seaplanes was built on a shore of Lake Ülemiste, together with a small arch bridge and a customs office, which allowed seaplanes to be relocated from a sea port. The same year the airport administration building was erected, which also served initially as a waiting place for travellers. The total cost of the whole airport project, including the cost of building flight hangars, was 25 million sents.
As the very first runways had soft surface, it made them unavailable for takeoffs and landings during spring and autumn seasons. Therefore, only seaplanes stationed at Lake Ülemiste were able to carry out flights, and during winter months, it was possible to use the frozen surface of the lake as a runway for small airplanes. The concrete paved runways of the first stage, inaugurated together with the opening of the airport, were about wide and long. As they were arranged in a form of a triangle, they allowed takeoffs and landings in six directions. These were the first concrete-paved runway in Estonia, it was needed some of stone, of construction aggregate and of cement to construct them.
In addition, of pipeworks was laid for drainage purposes. Before World War II, Tallinn Airport had regular connections to abroad by at least Aerotransport (now part of the SAS Group), Deutsche Luft Hansa, LOT and the Finnish company Aero (now Finnair). On 5 April 1937 the Helsinki-Tallinn-Warsaw-Jerusalem route was inaugurated by Mr. Bobkowski, the assistant of the Polish Minister of Transport. The length of the route was and the journey time was 34 hours. Passengers and cargo numbers grew quickly, from 4,100 passengers and of cargo in 1933 to 11,892 passengers and of cargo in 1937. Preparation and design works for a new passenger terminal started in 1938. 14 various projects were submitted for the architectural contest of the new terminal building, with the one from the architect Artur Jürvetson winning the contest in February the same year. The construction costs were estimated at 300 thousand Estonian kroons. The first airplane of then the flag carrier of Estonia, AGO, arrived at Tallinn Airport on 5 October 1939, flying the route Dessau–Königsberg–Tallinn.
As Estonia was occupied by Soviet Union, on 22 July 1940 the order was made by Soviet occupation authorities to transfer the airport to Soviet Air Forces. All aircraft, which were at the airport at that time, including interned Polish Lockheed 14, two Junkers Ju 52 of AGO and PTO-4 trainer aircraft of Estonian Airclub, were relocated to Lasnamäe Airfield.
During the German occupation, regular international connections were announced on 16 October and already restored on 15 November 1941, when Deutsche Lufthansa and Aero O/Y started the route Helsinki-Tallinn-Riga-Königsberg-Berlin. From 1942 to 1944 Sonderstaffel Buschmann was based at Tallinn Airport.
Soviet period Between 1945 and 1989, Aeroflot was the only airline that served Tallinn Airport.
The construction of the new passenger terminal, which was put on hold due to war, resumed. The building, which was redesigned in accordance with the Stalinist architecture, was finished in 1954 and commissioned on 7 November 1955. Regular flights with jet aircraft began on 2 October 1962 with a maiden passenger flight from Moscow with a Tu-124, which was the latest Soviet airliner. As the terminal built in 1954 became obsolete and unable to cope with growing airport traffic, the construction of the current terminal building began in 1976 and the terminal was opened in 1980, prior to the 1980 Summer Olympics sailing event, which was held in the city. The architect of the new terminal was Mihhail Piskov, who took visual inspiration from traditional Estonian housebarns, and the interior designer was Maile Grünberg. The runway was also lengthened then. The first foreign airline since World War II to operate regular flights from Tallinn was SAS, whose first flight to the airport took place on 25 November 1989.
Modern development The construction works of the first cargo terminal (Cargo 1), located in the middle of future cargo area on the north side of the airport, were carried out from September 1997 until March 1998. The passenger terminal building was completely modernised in 1999, increasing its capacity to 1.4 million passengers per year, and after that greatly expanded in 2008. The growing demand for extra space for cargo operations, created a situation where there was a need for cargo terminal expansion, Cargo 2. In order to meet the growing demand for new cargo facilities at Tallinn Airport, the number of cargo terminals was later expanded to four. In the year 2012, a new aircraft maintenance hangar was opened and the number of passengers passed two million mark the first time in the history of the airport. On 11 January 2013, the airport was accepted into Airport Carbon Accreditation emission managing and reduction programme by ACI. The year 2013 saw the introduction of an automatic border control system and athestart of construction of a new business aviation hangar complex.
2008 expansion
The airport underwent a large expansion project between January 2006 and September 2008. The existing terminal was expanded by and the architects of the project were Jean Marie Bonnard, Pia Tasa and Inge Sirkel-Suviste. The terminal was expanded in three directions, resulting in 18 new gates, separate lounges for Schengen and non-Schengen passengers, 10 new check-in desks and a new restaurant and cafes. Due to the gallery that connects all the gates and was constructed in the middle of the terminal building the terminal became T-shaped. The projecting terminal section enables a two-level traffic for international passengers. The renewed terminal has nine passenger bridges. The extensions constructed at the ends of the terminal building became additional rooms for registering for the flights and for delivering arriving luggage. Outside the terminal, the apron was refurbished and expanded and a new taxiway was added. The new terminal allows the airport to handle twice as many passengers as it could handle before. The renovated terminal received the award "Concrete Building of the Year 2008" by the Estonian Concrete Association.
Renaming After the death of former president of Estonia Lennart Meri on 14 March 2006, journalist Argo Ideon from Eesti Ekspress proposed to honour the president's memory by naming Tallinn Airport after him – "" (Lennart Meri International Airport), drawing parallels with John F. Kennedy International Airport, Charles de Gaulle Airport, Sabiha Gökçen International Airport etc.Ideon, A. Lennu jaam . 15 March 2006. Eesti Ekspress. (In Estonian) Ideon's article also mentioned the fact that Meri himself had shown concern for the condition of the then Soviet-era construction (in one memorable case Meri, having arrived from Japan, led the group of journalists that were expecting him, to the airport's toilets to do the interview there, in order to point out the shoddy condition of the facilities).
The name change was discussed at a board meeting on 29 March 2006, and on the opening of the new terminal on 19 September 2008, Prime Minister Andrus Ansip officially announced the renaming would take place in March 2009.
Baltic Sea cruise turnarounds
In 2011 a new project of cruise turnarounds was launched in cooperation with Tallinn Passenger Port and Happy Cruises. More than 7,000 Spanish passengers travelled that year on charter flights to and from Tallinn Airport. As the airport is located only from the city center cruise quay, transfer time from airport to cruise ship is under an hour.
In 2012, Pullmantur Air started its charter operations from Madrid–Barajas Airport with three Airbus A321s and two to three Boeing 747s. During the summer 2012 about 16,000 tourists were transferred. The company continued operations in 2013, transferring 25,000 tourists in five turnarounds, as well as there was one partial turnaround operation for the cruise ship MS Deutschland operated by Peter Deilmann Cruises.
In 2015, cruise tourists were attended to by four airlines – Iberia, Iberia Express, Wamos Air, and Vueling. Some 5,000 passengers were expected during three turnarounds for Pullmantur Cruises cruise line. Tallinn Airport served 9,369 cruise turnaround passengers in 2015. No cruise turnarounds are expected in summer 2016 due to construction works, but the airport plans to continue them in 2017.
Demise of Estonian Air On 7 November 2015, Estonian Air was liquidated following an adverse decision by the European Commission. This meant a significant temporary loss of business for the airport, as Estonian Air had been the largest carrier, accounting for one third of all capacity in 2014.
Future expansion (2025–2030) As of late 2025, Tallinn Airport has transitioned from its 2019 "Airport City" vision to a more immediate, phased expansion plan. This €75 million investment is the largest in the airport's history and aims to modernize the terminal to handle 5 million passengers annually by 2030. The current terminal, originally designed for 2.8 million passengers, served over 3.5 million in 2025, necessitating these upgrades to resolve critical bottlenecks in baggage handling and border control.
The project adds 16,500 m2 of new space and renovates 18,000 m2 of existing facilities across five stages:
Stage I (2025–2026): Modernization of the check-in area and the installation of next-generation self-service bag-drop kiosks. Stage II (2026–2028): Construction of a new arrival area and a high-capacity automated baggage handling system. This stage also includes the addition of two new gates and expanded retail space. Stage III (2026–2027): Expansion of the border control area to reduce wait times for non-Schengen flights and upgrades to the non-Schengen gate areas.