Alexei Leonov Kemerovo International Airport — Kemerovo, Russia

Alexei Leonov Kemerovo International Airport, coded KEJ, honors the cosmonaut who became the first human to walk in space during his 1965 Voskhod 2 mission, a Soviet space pioneer with roots in the Kemerovo region of southwestern Siberia. The airport serves Kemerovo, the administrative center of the Kuzbass, one of Russia's largest coal-producing basins, an industry that has shaped the regional economy since the nineteenth century. Domestic flights connect Kemerovo to Moscow and other major Russian cities, supporting business travel tied to coal mining, metallurgy, and chemical production concentrated throughout the surrounding Kuznetsk Basin. Siberian winters bring extended periods of extreme cold to the region, a climate factor that has historically shaped airport design and operations across Russia's interior. The renaming honoring Leonov occurred years after the airport's original Soviet-era construction.