Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · Syria's busiest airport, struck repeatedly by Israel in 2022–2023 and reopened to the world in January 2025.
A real-world airfield as described in public sources, and how sim maps represent it. Units, facilities and names change; each is dated where the sources allow, and the charts are not for navigation. Use current official publications for flight planning.
Location and identity
- Location
- 30 km south-east of Damascus, in Rif Dimashq Governorate, linked to the city by the M5 motorway [1]
- Country or territory
- Syria
- Coordinates
- 33.4115° N, 36.5156° E [2]
- Elevation
- 2,020 ft (616 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- ICAO OSDI · IATA DAM
- Other names
- None recorded
- Opened
- construction was given to a group of French companies in 1965; source 1 dates the opening both to the late 1960s and to 1973 [1]
- Theatre
- Middle East
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Civil
- Roles today
- Civil airport
- Operators
- General Authority of Civil Aviation · Syria, civil · as of Jan 2026 [1]
Runways and facilities
The sources do not date these figures. Facilities not listed here are not documented in the sources cited, which does not mean the airfield lacks them.
| Runway | Length | Width | Surface |
|---|---|---|---|
| 05R/23L [2] | 11,811 ft (3,600 m) | 148 ft (45 m) | asphalt |
| 05L/23R [1] [2]listed as closed in source 2; source 1 describes two parallel runways renovated in the 2010s | 9,843 ft (3,000 m) | Not given | asphalt |
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
- None documented in the sources cited
- Other
- Hardened aircraft shelters and artillery revetments on the south side of the airport [1]
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Damascus International Airport (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway, with its name
- Apron
- Hangar or terminal
- Airfield boundary
Runways, taxiways, aprons and buildings inside the airfield boundary, true north up, drawn from OpenStreetMap data retrieved 2026-10-28. Widths come from the map data or, where it gives none, a typical 45 m runway and 18 m taxiway. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the ODbL 1.0. Community-mapped, not an official aerodrome chart, and not for navigation.
Sim maps
Represented in: DCS: Syria, DCS: Sinai
DCS: Syria DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Damascus” · checked 2026-10-28 [3]
DCS: Sinai DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Damascus Intl” · checked 2026-10-28 [4]
Only the maps marked represented or confirmed absent have been checked. Any other map may or may not represent this airfield.
Other maps in Middle East, not yet checked for this airfield, which may lie outside them: DCS: Persian Gulf, DCS: Iraq, DCS: Iraq North, Falcon BMS: Israel.
Role today
Damascus International is Syria’s busiest airport and the home base of Syrian Air. [1] It closed during the opposition offensive on Damascus on 8 December 2024 and reopened to domestic flights on 18 December; international flights resumed on 7 January 2025 with a Qatar Airways arrival from Doha. [1] Since then Turkey has helped renovate it and installed a new radar in January 2026, and in August 2025 Syria and Qatar signed a US$4 billion deal for a third terminal. [1]
History
French companies began building the airport in 1965, and it replaced the old Mezzeh military airfield as the city’s main airport. [1] By the 1980s more than 30 airlines served it. [1] The civil war closed it and its approach roads on and off, and most foreign airlines left. [1]
In the later war it was repeatedly struck by Israel, which said it was hitting Iranian weapons transfers. [1] A strike in June 2022 damaged the runways and halted flights for two weeks; another on 2 January 2023 killed at least two soldiers. [1] In October and November 2023, during the Gaza war, strikes on 12 October, 22 October and 26 November each put it out of service again, the second together with Aleppo’s airport. [1]
The airfield
Two parallel runways, 05R/23L and 05L/23R, able to take the largest airliners in service. [1] Source 2 lists 05R/23L as 11,811 ft long and 05L/23R as closed. [2] The southern part of the airport has hardened aircraft shelters and artillery revetments. [1]
Sources
- Damascus International Airport. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascus_International_Airport (accessed 2026-10-28). History, the Israeli strikes of 2022–2023, reopening after December 2024, and the airfield.
- Airport and runway data, OSDI. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Rows for OSDI in airports.csv and runways.csv: position, elevation and both runways.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Syria airbases (Damascus.json). dcs-world-schema, open-source data extracted by running DCS World 2.9.30.28536. https://github.com/YoloWingPixie/dcs-world-schema/blob/c3091e6c08fb8167e26145d0e33c10e4140c6fe7/dcs-world-reference/latest/airbases/Syria/Damascus.json (accessed 2026-10-28). With its beacon and navaid files, as tabled on the DCS: Syria map page.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Sinai airbases (Damascus Intl.json). dcs-world-schema, open-source data extracted by running DCS World 2.9.30.28536. https://github.com/YoloWingPixie/dcs-world-schema/blob/c3091e6c08fb8167e26145d0e33c10e4140c6fe7/dcs-world-reference/latest/airbases/SinaiMap/Damascus%20Intl.json (accessed 2026-10-28). With its beacon and navaid files, as tabled on the DCS: Sinai map page.
Wikipedia articles are secondary sources and can change; they are cited with the date they were read. FAA airport data and diagrams are official but are reissued every 28 or 56 days; each is cited with the edition read. pydcs mirrors the DCS terrain data at the commit linked.