Tirana International Airport Mother Teresa

Tirana International Airport Mother Teresa is Albania's only commercial airport — a genuine monopoly position that compresses all of the country's aviation demand, plus a rapidly growing international tourism stream, into a single-runway site 11 mi (17 km) northwest of downtown Tirana at 126 ft (38 m) elevation in the village of Rinas. It handles 170 routes across 100 destinations through 53 airlines, a network breadth unusual for a country with no second airport and only 2.8M residents, and one of the fastest-growing route counts in Europe following Albania's mid-2020s tourism boom driven by Italian, German, and Balkan visitors to the Adriatic and Ionian coasts. No Albanian flag carrier exists since the 2011 collapse of Albanian Airlines; instead, low-cost operators Wizz Air and Ryanair have built their largest Balkan bases at TIA, operating dozens of daily flights into Italy, Germany, the UK, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux, and the Nordics. Turkish Airlines, Lufthansa, Austrian, ITA Airways, Pegasus, AJet, LOT, SWISS, and British Airways maintain daily or multi-daily service, while summer sees heavy charter activity from Israeli, Saudi, and Gulf operators. Italy (Milan–Bergamo, Rome, Bologna, Verona, Venice, Pisa) and Germany (Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Hamburg) are the dominant corridors by volume. The single asphalt runway (17/35) measures 9,843 ft (3,000 m) and handles narrowbody traffic up to 737 MAX and A321neo; occasional widebody charters from Israeli and Gulf operators also operate during peak summer. A Terminal 2 extension completed in 2025 roughly doubled throughput capacity after 2024 passenger volume reached a record 11M, overwhelming the original 2007-era terminal. A second airport at Vlora is under construction on Albania's southern coast to relieve TIA and serve the Ionian Riviera resort market at Saranda, Himara, and Ksamil, but until it opens in the late 2020s, TIA remains the sole choke point for all Albanian commercial air travel.