The article deals with the problem of defining the influence of airport activity on regional economic development and taking this influence into account in development of regional cluster-based policies. The fact that these issues have been poorly studied, at the background of strategic importance of social and economic development of the Russian regions, in particular Siberian Federal District and the Omsk region as part of it, and the idea of including the Omsk international airport in this region’s backbone transport network, make consideration of these issues crucial. The main objective of the study is to substantiate expediency of including the Omsk airport in the region’s cluster-based policies. The results obtained are as follows: we have described the mechanism of participation of the airport and its activity in the process or formation and functioning of logic chains, which in particular combine enterprises into a cluster; we have defined cluster-forming features of airport activity; we have conducted correlation and regression analysis which allowed to find correlation dependency in the region between Gross Regional Product per capita, agricultural produce, fixed assets of the region’s processing industry and coefficient of air population mobility and develop a multiregression model, which proves substantial influence of the Omsk airport’s economic activity on the regional economic development; we have brought to light lack of cluster-based policies in the Omsk region and the resulting inefficiency of the existing clusters; we have developed recommendations to improve economic clusterization in the Omsk region with the necessary inclusion of airport activity in this process, and charted prospects of future studies connected with further development of the problem of influence of airports on the economic development of Siberian Federal District and predictive estimate of efficiency of backbone transport network in the territory. Application: the results obtained in the course of the study can be used to develop regional cluster-based policies in the Omsk region and development plan of OAO «Omsk airport» as a growth point of the region. Practical relevance: we have developed recommendations to advance economic clusterization in the Omsk region with the necessary inclusion of airport activity in the process.