Modibo Keita International Airport

Modibo Keita International — renamed in 2012 for Mali's first president after decades as Bamako–Sénou — is the sole international gateway to a landlocked country of roughly 23 million people, which alone qualifies it for the list of the world's 534 largest airports. The single 3,200 m (10,498 ft) asphalt runway, rehabilitated with U.S. Millennium Challenge funding in 2011, is long enough to accept widebody aircraft out of Paris, Istanbul, and Addis Ababa without payload penalties, and sits at 380 m (1,247 ft) elevation on the plateau south of the capital. Traffic is modest in global terms but strategically concentrated: 12 airlines serve 16 destinations via about 31 scheduled routes (2026), with Air France, Turkish Airlines, Ethiopian, Royal Air Maroc, and ASKY anchoring long-haul and intra-African connectivity. The airport functions as Mali's only scheduled link to Europe, doubling as the logistics hub for UN MINUSMA successor missions, international NGOs, and the gold-mining sector that accounts for most of the country's export revenue. A Chinese-built passenger terminal opened in 2018 added formal jet bridges, a VIP pavilion, and roughly 1.5 million annual passenger capacity. BKO is the administrative seat of Aéroports du Mali and the designated alternate for several Sahel routings, which keeps fuel reserves and emergency capacity well above what domestic demand alone would require. Its place among the 534 largest is earned less on passenger volume than on runway length, widebody capability, and the absence of any competing hub within a thousand kilometres.