A famous climate scientist designed the hangar at Belgrade's first proper airport
When Belgrade opened its international airport on the flat land across the Sava in 1927, the reinforced concrete hangar was designed by Milutin Milanković, the Serbian scientist better known for explaining how shifts in Earth's orbit drive long-term climate change. The city's aviation story is full of surprises like that.
Flying came early. Belgrade's first airfield opened in 1910 at Banjica, used by pioneer aviators and soon by the Serbian Air Force, which got a wooden hangar there during the First Balkan War. In 1923 an airport near Pančevo joined a new Paris to Istanbul route through Belgrade, and on that route the world's first night flight took place the same year. Because reaching Pančevo meant crossing the Danube, the city built the closer Dojno Polje airport, where the local airline Aeroput began flying in 1928.
By the early 1930s Belgrade had become a real crossroads. Imperial Airways routed flights linking London with India through the city, and regular services connected it with destinations from Madrid and London to Cairo and Karachi, and competitors in long-distance contests, the Schlesinger race to Africa among them, touched down there. German forces took over the airport in 1941; Allied bombs hit it in 1944 and retreating German troops wrecked what remained, yet it was rebuilt by October that year.
Growth eventually swallowed the site. Jet travel demanded more space, and planners wanted the land for a new district called Novi Beograd, so a fresh airport rose on the Surčin plateau west of the city. President Josip Broz Tito opened it on 28 April 1962 with a 3,000-metre runway and equipment that earned the top international rating of the time; the old field saw its last departure early in 1964.
The 1990s were lean, as sanctions that included an air travel ban left the terminals nearly empty. Normal traffic returned in 2001, the airport took the inventor Nikola Tesla's name in 2006, and in 2018 the French operator Vinci won a 25-year concession for 501 million euros, since extended to 2044.
Source: Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport
