David the Builder Kutaisi International Airport

Officially David the Builder Kutaisi International Airport, KUT sits in the village of Kopitnari, about 14 km west of Kutaisi (Georgia's third-largest city) and roughly 260 km — about 3.5 to 4 hours by road — from Tbilisi. Built on a Soviet-era military/civil airfield, it closed for renovation in 2011 and reopened in September 2012 with Wizz Air's CEO among the guests at the ceremony, foreshadowing the role the airport would go on to play.

Wizz Air made Kutaisi its 25th global base in 2016 and has kept two based aircraft there since, flying roughly 23 nonstop European destinations (Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Milan, Barcelona, Rome, Athens and more), plus a new Bratislava route launched January 2026. Pegasus links Kutaisi to Istanbul, FlyArystan connects to four Kazakh cities, and Belavia runs a seasonal Minsk service. The single compact terminal handles well over its original 1-million-passenger design capacity — 1.72 million passengers in 2024 — though growth has slowed recently (+2.3% in early 2025) compared with Tbilisi and especially Batumi.

Why it's Georgia's "alternative hub": Wizz Air's dense low-cost network from KUT routinely undercuts fares into Tbilisi from the same European cities, so flying into Kutaisi and continuing overland has become a well-established budget-travel pattern — one covered by multiple dedicated "Kutaisi to Tbilisi" travel guides. It's also a practical gateway to Batumi and the wider western Georgia/Imereti region, not just Tbilisi. That said, the airport's traffic is heavily tied to the EU's 2017 visa-liberalisation for Georgian citizens, which analysts have flagged as a structural dependency worth watching — a sharp policy reversal could hit Kutaisi's passenger numbers hard.

Getting onward: the official shuttle operators Georgian Bus and Omnibus Express run coaches timed to flight arrivals — about 25 GEL one-way to Tbilisi's Liberty Square (roughly 4 hours), with stops in Kutaisi and Batumi too. The renovated Kopitnari railway station next to the terminal connects to the national rail network (around 3.5+ hours to Tbilisi). A private taxi to Tbilisi runs about 200 GEL. Within Kutaisi itself, the airport is a quick 20–30 minute drive from the centre.