Phuket International Airport

Phuket International Airport (HKT) is the second-busiest airport in Thailand after Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi, and one of Southeast Asia's largest dedicated leisure gateways. Sitting on the northwest coast of Phuket island, the airport funnels international visitors into the Andaman Sea tourism belt that includes Krabi, Phang Nga and the Similan Islands, handling more than 18 million passengers in peak years. Operated by Airports of Thailand (AOT), HKT routinely appears in global league tables of the busiest resort-focused airports alongside Palma, Cancún and Antalya. HKT occupies roughly 150 ha (370 acres) at the northern tip of Phuket, adjacent to Mai Khao Beach famous for its low-altitude approach photography, at an elevation of 82 ft (25 m). A single 10,171 ft (3,100 m) east-west runway (09/27) handles widebody operations, and two terminals separate international and domestic traffic with combined design capacity of 18 million passengers per year. A third-phase expansion announced by AOT aims to lift throughput past 25 million by the early 2030s. Sixty-two airlines link Phuket to 81 nonstop destinations, including long-haul services from Doha, Dubai, Istanbul, Frankfurt and Sydney, dense short-haul networks across mainland China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul, and charter programs from Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Russia. Thai Airways, Thai AirAsia, Bangkok Airways, Thai Vietjet and Thai Lion Air anchor the domestic network to Bangkok, Chiang Mai and Koh Samui, while the international apron hosts every major Gulf, East Asian and low-cost carrier operating to Thailand (2025).