Digital Design has recently released their rendition of Saint Petersburg Pulkovo Airport (ULLI) for X-Plane 12, the second-busiest airport in Russia, with a yearly average of 18.1 million passengers.

The airport’s construction started in 1931 near Leningrad (Saint Petersburg’s former name from the Soviet Union era), reaching completion a year later and already welcoming its first domestic flight from Moscow.

Four years later, they laid out the foundation for a new passenger terminal, and the construction started shortly after, only to suddenly stop in 1941 due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Between 1941 and 1944, there were no flights at all to the airport, as there was a hill nearby with German artillery that was bombarding Leningrad on a daily basis.

It wasn’t until 1944 that the airport would be completely cleared of Germans, but there was a lot of maintenance to be done due to the substantial damage incurred to the infrastructure. Normal operations were only to resume in 1945, although only for cargo and mail. Scheduled passenger flights were resumed in 1948, following the completion of repair work on the terminal.

A new terminal was inaugurated in 1951, followed by a new, extended runway in the mid-1950s, which allowed Pulkovo to handle larger aircraft and prepare preemptively for the advent of jet aircraft.

In May 1973, yet another passenger terminal was inaugurated, designed by Alexandr Zyk and regarded as a masterpiece of Soviet postmodernism.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, passenger traffic figures declined substantially, dropping from 10 million per year in 1990 to roughly 5 million in 2006.

The construction of a new terminal, Terminal 1, was approved in 2010, with a useful area of 150,000 square meters. It opened in 2013, featuring luxurious business lounges, restaurants, and pharmacies, and was able to withstand significant fluctuations in yearly passenger figures.

It’s a hub for Aeroflot, Nordwind Airlines, Pobeda, Rossiya, Smartavia, and Ural Airlines. Air Cairo, Air Serbia, Azerbaijan Airlines, Belavia, Conviasa, China Eastern Airlines, Emirates, Mahan Air, NordStar, Nouvelair, Pegasus Airlines, S7 Airlines, SCAT Airlines, Turkish Airlines, Uzbekistan Airways, and Yamal Airlines also serve it.

The scenery features an accurate rendition of the airport, with custom ground textures, PBR materials, custom jetways, custom aerial imagery, custom night lighting, city landmarks, and more.

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It’s available on SimMarket for roughly $20.69, requiring at least 2.26 GB of free hard disk space to install.

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