Drafted — not technically validated
Record revision 1 · Air Arabia's base and a major cargo hub, successor to RAF Sharjah, and an A-10 base in Desert Storm.
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
- East-south-east of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates [1]
- Country or territory
- United Arab Emirates
- Coordinates
- 25.3286° N, 55.5172° E [2]
- Elevation
- 111 ft (34 m) [2]
- Identifiers
- ICAO OMSJ · IATA SHJ
- Other names
- None recorded
- Opened
- on 1 January 1977, replacing RAF Sharjah closer to the city [1]
- Theatre
- Middle East
Role and operators
- Status
- Active · Civil
- Roles today
- Civil airport
- Operators
- Sharjah Airport · United Arab Emirates, civil · as of Oct 2026 [1]
Units
Permanently based units belong to the airfield; rotational and temporarily deployed units are there for a period or an operation. Dates are when the sources place each unit there; "as of" is when a source described it as current.
Earlier
926th Tactical Fighter Group, about 450 members [1]
- Service
- United States, air force
- Basing
- Temporarily deployed
- Aircraft
- A-10 Thunderbolt II
- When
- 1990–1991
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.
- Arresting gear
- None documented in the sources cited
- Navaids
- None documented in the sources cited
Figure 1 — Airfield map of Sharjah International Airport (to scale)
- Runway
- Taxiway, with its name
- Apron
- Hangar or terminal
- Helipad
- 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: Persian Gulf
DCS: Persian Gulf DCS World · Present day
Represented as “Sharjah Intl” · checked 2026-10-28 [3]
- Runways 12L/30R and 12R/30L [3]
- Tower 118.6 MHz VHF [3]
- Two ILS approaches, ISRE on 108.55 MHz and ISHW on runway 30R, 111.95 MHz [3]
Differences from the real airfield
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: Syria, DCS: Sinai, DCS: Iraq, DCS: Iraq North, Falcon BMS: Israel.
Role today
Sharjah International is the UAE’s third-busiest airport and, by 2015 figures, the third-largest air freight hub in the Middle East. [1] It is the home base of the low-cost carrier Air Arabia, which has its headquarters at the airport. [1]
History
The airport opened on 1 January 1977, replacing RAF Sharjah, which had opened closer to the city in 1932 as the first airport in the Gulf states, for Imperial Airways, and which the RAF used until 14 December 1971. [1] The old terminal and tower are now the Al Mahatta Museum, and the old runway is part of King Abdul Aziz Street. [1]
In Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, in late 1990 and early 1991, the US Air Force’s 926th Tactical Fighter Group flew A-10 Thunderbolt IIs from the airport, with about 450 of its members stationed there. [1]
The airfield
One asphalt runway, 12/30, 4,060 m long. [1]
Sources
- Sharjah International Airport. Wikipedia (secondary source). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharjah_International_Airport (accessed 2026-10-28). Overview, RAF Sharjah, Desert Storm use and the runway.
- Airport and runway data, OMSJ. OurAirports open data (public domain, community-maintained). https://davidmegginson.github.io/ourairports-data/airports.csv (accessed 2026-10-28). Rows for OMSJ in airports.csv and runways.csv: position, elevation and runway 12/30.
- dcs-world-schema reference data: Persian Gulf airbases (Sharjah 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/PersianGulf/Sharjah%20Intl.json (accessed 2026-10-28). With its beacon and navaid files, as tabled on the DCS: Persian Gulf 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.