Kajaani Airport — Kajaani, Finland

Kajaani Airport (KAJ) serves the town of Kajaani in the Kainuu region of eastern Finland, close to the Russian border. KAJ provides scheduled domestic flights to Helsinki, functioning as an important link for a sparsely populated region where road and rail travel times to the capital are considerably longer than a short flight. The airport supports both business travel tied to local industries, including forestry and technology sectors, and leisure traffic to Kainuu's lakes and wilderness areas. Like many of Finland's regional airports, KAJ has a straightforward single-runway layout without significant international service. Its continued operation has periodically been the subject of national debate over subsidies for regional air routes in Finland's sparsely populated areas.