OAG Travel News

The Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (“North Korea”) is a mystery to most everyone on the planet.  I like a good mystery, so I thought I would research air service in North Korea.

Not surprisingly, my research didn’t last long.  Taking advantage of the data compiled by OAG, I was able to determine that North Korea has only one commercial airport and one airline provides the majority of the air service.  Even more shocking is the fact that on average, there are only three flights per day in North Korea, a country of 23 million people.  Nearby Taiwan has a similar sized population and enjoys nearly 800 daily flights.

North Korea’s Sunan International Airport is located in Sunan, a suburb of the capital city of Pyongyang.  As the only commercial service airport, Sunan International obviously accounts for all of the scheduled air service traffic into an out of North Korea.

The state airline, Air Koryo Korean Airways, not only operates scheuduled, charter and government flights, but is also responsible for all civilian aviation in North Korea, including the operation of all airports.  Air Koryo operates 70 percent of the total scheduled commerical air service in North Korea which equates to an average of two daily flights – one departure and one arrival.  Air Koryo provides nonstop service from Sunan International to four cities – Bangkok, Thailand; Beijing, China; Shenyang, China; and Vladivostok, Russia.

Air Koryo operates only Russian-made aircraft on its scheduled commercial flights.  Passengers traveling to Bangkok will enjoy service on 169-seat Ilyushin IL-62 aircraft, while passengers to all other destinations will travel aboard various Tupolev aircraft that are part of the carrier’s fleet.  Some lucky passengers on Air Koryo’s Beijing-Pyongyang route will travel aboard the carrier’s brand-new 142-seat Tupolev TU-204.  Air Koryo purchased two of these aircraft in late 2007, a big step in terms of fleet renewal.

Currently the only other airline to provide scheduled commercial flights to North Korea is Star Alliance carrier Air China with three weekly flights from Sunan International to Beijing on Boeing 737-300 aircraft.  Over the past five years, Pyongyang has also enjoyed nonstop service to Beijing on China Southern as well as to Khabarovsk, Russia (Air Koryo), Macau (Air Koryo) and Seoul (Korean Air and Asiana), although all of these services have since been discontinued.

In researching this article, I ran across several news stories that discussed the fact that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has a fear of flying*.  In fact, on an official trip to Russia in 2001, the Dear Leader traveled nine days (one way) in a 21-car armor-plated train across the Trans-Siberian railway to Moscow.  When his meetings were finished, he traveled back home the same way.

With a flight connection over Vladivostok, he could have made the journey in less than 12 hours.

Source: Official Airline Guide (OAG) Schedule Tapes; Air Transport Intelligence
* http://archives.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/08/03/nkorea.traintrip/index.html

OAG contributor Laura Jackson was just two weeks old when she took her first flight on Piedmont Airlines.  In junior high school, she developed a business plan for her own airline.  Today she manages strategy and policy issues at one of the world's busiest airports and provides original content and aviation industry analysis for OAG.