📋 Table of Contents

🏢 1. Two Terminals & the Bina Layout

GYD is one airport with two passenger buildings. Terminal 1 opened in April 2014, covers 65,000 m² and was designed for around 6 million passengers a year; it handles effectively all international traffic, and it’s the building you’ll use unless you’re connecting to a domestic flight to Ganja, Lankaran or Nakhchivan. The older Terminal 2 now handles domestic and some short-haul regional flights. A free shuttle links the two, but the walk-up distance is short enough that most travellers never need it.

T1 is genuinely one of the better-regarded terminals in the region — its timber-pod interior won Heydar Aliyev the Skytrax “Best Airport in Central Asia and CIS” award in March 2026. Practically, that means clean signage in Azerbaijani, Russian and English, fast Wi-Fi, and a landside zone with the bank counters and SIM kiosks you’ll want before you head into town. The airport code GYD is named for the late president; the ICAO code is UBBB.

One layout point worth knowing: the lounges and the bank/SIM counters at GYD are landside (before security). Sort your cash, SIM and lounge plans before you pass passport control on the way out, not after.

🛂 2. The E-Visa You Sort Before You Fly

This is the section that matters most, because Azerbaijan’s border system is the biggest single difference between Baku and the European airports you may be used to. There is no EES and no ETIAS here — those are EU systems, and Azerbaijan is neither in the EU nor in Schengen. What Azerbaijan has instead is its own electronic visa, issued through the government ASAN portal at evisa.gov.az.

For most Western travellers — EU, UK, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand — the e-visa is required, and you apply online before departure. The official government fee is $25 for standard processing (up to three working days) or $60 for urgent processing (issued within three hours). Both include a small service fee. The visa is single-entry and allows a stay of up to 30 days. Apply only through the official evisa.gov.az site: numerous look-alike agency sites add markups of $20–50 for the same document.

A handful of nationalities skip the visa entirely — citizens of Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Georgia and a few others get 90 days visa-free, and a second group including China gets 30 days — but if you’re reading this from Western Europe or North America, assume you need the e-visa and apply at least a few days out.

Who needs what — Azerbaijan entry, 2026

The e-visa covers tourism and short business visits. There is no Schengen-style 90/180 rolling allowance to track here — each e-visa is a discrete single-entry 30-day permit, and you simply apply again for a future trip. Keep a printed or offline PDF copy; the airline checks it at check-in and Azerbaijani border control checks it on arrival.

🚌 3. The H1 Aero Express, BakıKart & Taxis into Baku

There is no metro or train line directly to the airport — a recurring misconception. The connection into Baku is the H1 Airport Express bus, and it’s good: modern Neoplan coaches with luggage racks and air-conditioning, running 24 hours a day (every ~20 minutes during the day, every ~45 minutes overnight) and reaching the city in about 30 minutes. The fare is ₼1.30 (roughly $0.75) — one of the cheapest airport links anywhere. The H1 stops at the Koroglu transport hub and terminates near the 28 May metro station and the central railway station, putting you onto the metro network for onward travel.

The catch — and it trips up first-timers — is how you pay. The H1 does not take cash and does not reliably take a foreign contactless bank card. You need a BakıKart, the city transit card, which you buy and top up from the machine at the airport bus stop (or via the M10 / Birbank apps). Buy the BakıKart before you queue; it also works on the metro and city buses, so it’s worth having anyway.

Taxis are the alternative. The official Baku Taxi ranks and ride-hail apps (Bolt and Uber both operate) will run roughly ₼17–22 ($10–13) to the centre in 20–25 minutes. The trap is the unmarked drivers who approach you in the arrivals hall: agree on app pricing or insist on the meter, and avoid anyone quoting a flat $40–50 “tourist” fare. The purple official-livery cabs are metered.

One money note: the bureau-de-change counters in arrivals carry a markup. Change a small amount for the bus card and immediate needs, then use a bank ATM or pay by card in town, where rates are far better.

🛋️ 4. Lounges: Salam, Absheron & the Priority Pass Options

GYD is well-served for lounges, and several accept Priority Pass. In Terminal 1 the main options are the Salam Lounge, the Absheron Lounge and the Baku Club; Terminal 2 has the Mugam Lounge. Walk-in access at the Salam Lounge starts at around $38 per person, with hot food, showers and Wi-Fi.

Read the location detail before you commit: the Salam Lounge is a landside check-in lounge (zone B, first floor), which means it’s outside the security/passport-control zone and not reachable once you’ve gone airside or while connecting. If you hold a Priority Pass and want lounge time after passport control, confirm which of the lounges is in the departures airside zone rather than landside before you clear the border. For a long international connection, check whether your option is airside; for a relaxed pre-check-in start, the landside Salam works fine.

🍢 5. Azerbaijani Food: Plov, Qutab, Dolma & Black Tea

Azerbaijani cooking sits on the Silk Road seam between Turkish, Persian and Central Asian kitchens, and it’s worth eating properly rather than defaulting to the airport’s international chains. The dishes to know: plov (saffron-stained rice pilaf, often with lamb, chestnuts and dried fruit — the celebratory centrepiece), qutab (thin folded flatbread griddled with greens, pumpkin or minced lamb), dolma (vine leaves or vegetables stuffed with spiced mince and rice), dushbara (tiny lamb dumplings in broth), and lavangi (chicken or fish stuffed with a walnut-and-plum paste, a Caspian-coast speciality).

Two things define the table. First, pomegranate (nar) — pressed into juice, reduced into the tart narsharab sauce poured over grilled sturgeon and kebabs. Second, tea: Azerbaijani black tea is served in an armudu, the pear-shaped glass, alongside cherry or fig jam and, often, sugar gnawed rather than stirred. The teahouse (çayxana) is a social institution, not a tourist act.

At the airport itself, T1’s landside and airside both have cafés and a couple of sit-down restaurants; the food is fine and priced for an airport. If you’ve time in town, eat there instead — a proper plov-and-tea lunch in the Old City costs a fraction of the terminal equivalent.

💡 6. Insider: Icherisheher, the Flame Towers & a Caspian Layover

Baku rewards even a short visit, but the geography is the constraint: the Old City sits about 25–27 km from GYD, so any layover plan has to budget for the round trip.

Icherisheher — the Old City. Baku’s walled medieval core is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the single thing to see if you have only a few hours. Inside the walls: the 12th-century Maiden Tower (Qız Qalası), a stone cylinder on the seafront whose original purpose is still genuinely debated; and the 15th-century Palace of the Shirvanshahs, the seat of Baku’s medieval rulers, with its mosque, mausoleum and divankhana courtyard. The lanes are flat, walkable and dense — you can see the headline sights in 90 minutes.

The Flame Towers and the waterfront. Above the Old City rise the three Flame Towers, the LED-skinned skyscrapers that have become Baku’s skyline signature, lit after dark. Below, Baku Boulevard runs for kilometres along the Caspian — a flat seafront promenade good for a walk if the wind off the sea isn’t brutal (it often is; “Baku” is popularly tied to the Persian for “wind-pounded”). For architecture, Zaha Hadid’s white-wave Heydar Aliyev Center is about 15 km from the airport, closer than the Old City and worth a photo stop if you’re driving past.

The layover math. Honest version: with the e-visa already in hand (you cannot leave the airport on a transit without it), a taxi to the Old City is 20–25 minutes each way, ₼17–22. That makes the round trip plus a walk feasible on a 5-hour-plus layover — budget 30 minutes back through check-in and security on return. On a 3–4 hour layover, you’re cutting it fine; the smarter move is the Old City by taxi only if your gap is genuinely 5+ hours, otherwise stay airside. The H1 bus is cheaper but the ~30-minute each-way ride plus the BakıKart faff makes it the wrong tool for a tight connection.

One trap to name directly: do not accept a “tour” from a driver who intercepts you in arrivals offering to “show you Baku and bring you back.” Use a metered official cab or a ride-hail app both ways, and watch your own clock.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

📊 2026 Summary Data Table