Poet Alexander Pushkin and Empress Elizabeth Petrovna are among the famous Russians to have airports named after them. The names were chosen by the public, who were able to nominate and vote for their preferred icons.
Image: picture-alliance/Russian Look/L. Faerberg
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Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday renamed dozens of the country's airports to honor famous Russians, including tsars, space pioneers and writers.
Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport is now named after national poet Alexander Pushkin, known for works such as Eugene Onegin, while the airport in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on far eastern Sakhalin Island will take writer Anton Chekhov's name.
Chekhov visited the island but only to write about the grim conditions in its tsarist-era prisons.
The new names were chosen using an online poll launched last autumn that asked the public to nominate and vote for famous figures whose names could be given to some 40 airports in Russia.
Most of the country's airports had been named after their geographical location, usually the names of villages.
Istanbul opened its new airport in 2018, which Turkey says is the biggest in the world. But what is it up against? DW looks at its rivals around the globe.
Image: Presseabteilung Igairport
Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, Atlanta, US
When it comes to passenger numbers, no airport can measure up to the one in Atlanta. Almost 104 million people passed through Hartsfield-Jackson air-traffic hub in 2017, according to data provided by airport association ACI. No other airport has managed to break 100 million. This makes Hartsfield-Jackson number one on our list.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/D. Goldman
Beijing Capital International Airport, China
China has its own favorite: Beijing Capital International Airport ranks second in the number of passengers, welcoming 95.8 million people in 2017. The air-traffic infrastructure was built up ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games. UK star architect Norman Foster designed a new, sprawling terminal for the event.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Reynolds
Dubai International Airport
In 2017, Dubai's airport welcomed over 88 million passengers. Almost all of them were non-Arabs — as many as 87.72 million. Many of them apparently appreciate Dubai International for its almost legendary reputation for shopping.
Image: Reuters/A. Mohammad
Tokyo Haneda Airport, Japan
Alas, the Japanese capital is not in the top three, but its airport still boasts 85.4 million visitors per year, enough for a solid fourth place in our ranking.
Image: AFP/Getty Images/K. Nogi
Los Angeles International Airport, US
If you go on vacation to California, chances are you will land at Los Angeles International Airport, better known as the LAX in America. The flow of passengers does not quite measure up to the Atlanta airport, but it still had over 85.5 million visitors last year.
Image: picture alliance/Markus Mainka
O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, US
Even in Chicago, there is no rest from fans for German football star Bastian Schweinsteiger. The former Bayern Munich and Manchester United midfielder now plays for Chicago Fire, and frequently flies through O'Hare. Schweinsteiger is only one of 79.81 million passengers who go through the Chicago hub, which is named after an American WWII pilot.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/T. Shen
London Heathrow, UK
London boasts three airports, the largest and most well known of which is Heathrow. It services just over 78 million passengers per year. And it manages all that with just two runways.
Image: Getty Images/D. Kitwood
Hong Kong International Airport, China
You don't have to be in a plane to sneak a good look at Hong Kong's competitor, called Chek Lap Kok Airport locally. The compound is similarly impressive from a cable car as it may have been for the 72.67 million passengers who travelled through it in 2017. Hong Kong, or "fragrant harbor" in English, is built on reclaimed land on the island of Chek Lap Kok in the South China Sea.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/X. Yun
Shanghai Pudong International Airport, China
Safety first! One of Shanghai's two airports ranks just behind Hong Kong's. Pudong International Airport served 70 million passengers in 2017. This marks a slight drop from the year before, but cargo flights picked up by over 11 percent, according to ACI.
Image: picture-alliance/Imaginechina
Paris-Charles de Gaulle, France
The Paris airport named after President de Gaulle, also known as Roissy airport, comes in at number 10 on our list of busiest air-traffic hubs. Last year, it welcomed 69.47 million passengers. But those figures are not everything in an airport ranking; there are also parameters such as the amount of goods transported, the size, the number of terminals and many more.
Image: AP
Berlin-Brandenburg Airport, Germany
And then there is the amount of time it takes to actually build an airport. In that respect, the Germans might well be No. 1. Perhaps it's simply a question of definition: The nine years that have so far passed since construction began could be seen as evidence of thoroughness.
Image: DW/W. Szymanski
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Vote causes controversy
The poll caused controversy over the renaming of the airport in the western city of Kaliningrad, which was formerly part of Germany.
Many locals voted to name it after German philosopher Immanuel Kant, prompting accusations of a lack of patriotism.
The Kaliningrad airport will now be named after Empress Elizabeth Petrovna, whose army captured the city in 1758 but abandoned it five years later.
Other airports to be named after tsars include one in the northern city of Murmansk, which will be named after the last tsar, Nicholas II.
Opera star Khvorostovsky, who died of a brain tumor in 2017 at the age of 55 will be honored in his native Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk where the airport will take his name.
Pioneering space scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky's name will be given to the airport of the city of Kaluga where he died, while Sergei Korolyov, the spacecraft designer who is credited with helping to launch first man into space, will be commemorated in the Volga city of Samara, where he spent some of his career.
