Kannur International Airport

Kannur International Airport (IATA: CNN, ICAO: VOKN) is an international airport serving the city of Kannur, the Mahé district of Puducherry and the rest of northern Kerala in India. It is located in Mattanur, 28 km (17 mi) east of Kannur and 24 km (15 mi) east of Thalassery. It is owned and operated by Kannur International Airport Limited (KIAL), a public–private consortium. The airport opened for commercial operations on 9 December 2018.

The airport served one million passengers in just nine months since commercial operations began. Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in India, the airport could maintain stable growth, and it achieved the milestone of two million passengers in the twenty-third month of operations in November 2020.

The first aircraft to land was an Indian Air Force (IAF) aircraft that touched down at the airport on 29 February 2016. The first trial passenger flight operation was conducted on 20 September 2018, using a Boeing 737-800 aircraft of Air India Express. On the inaugural day, 9 December 2018, an Air India Express flight IX 715, operated with a Boeing 737-800, took off to Abu Dhabi at 10:13 (IST), becoming the first commercial passenger aircraft to depart from Kannur. The airport was inaugurated by then Minister of Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu and Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan.