Cayenne – Félix Éboué Airport (, ) is

French Guiana French Guiana, or Guyane in French, is an Overseas departments and regions of France, overseas department and region of France located on the northern coast of South America in the Guianas and the West Indies. Bordered by Suriname to the west ...

's main international airport. It is located near the commune of

Matoury Matoury (; ) is a commune of French Guiana, an overseas region and department of France located in South America. Matoury is a southern suburb of Cayenne, the '' préfecture'' and largest city of French Guiana. Cayenne – Félix Eboué Air ...

, southwest of French Guiana's capital city of

Cayenne Cayenne (; ; ) is the Prefectures in France, prefecture and capital city of French Guiana, an overseas region and Overseas department, department of France located in South America. The city stands on a former island at the mouth of the Caye ...

. It is managed by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of French Guiana (CCI Guyane). Air Guyane Express has its headquarters on the airport property.

History

The first airfield at Cayenne, called "Gallion," was built in 1943 in ten months by the U.S. Army Air Corps as a base allowing bombers to reach Africa. Though quickly abandoned upon the completion of the new airport, it can still be found very close to the aerodrome. The new airport was first given the name "Rochambeau" in reference to

Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1 July 1725 – 10 May 1807) was a French Royal Army officer who played a critical role in the Franco-American victory at the siege of Yorktown in 1781 during the American Revolutionary Wa ...

, commander-in-chief of the French troops in the

American Revolutionary War The American Revolutionary War (April 19, 1775 – September 3, 1783), also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which Am ...

. It was purchased by France in 1949. This name was controversial because the airport's namesake's son,

Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau Divisional-General Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau (7 April 1755 – 20 October 1813) was a French Army officer and colonial administrator who served in the American Revolutionary War and French Revolutionary and Napoleoni ...

, harshly repressed the

Haitian Revolution The Haitian Revolution ( or ; ) was a successful insurrection by slave revolt, self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti. The revolution was the only known Slave rebellion, slave up ...

during the

Saint-Domingue expedition The Saint-Domingue expedition was a large French military invasion sent by Napoleon Bonaparte, then French Consulate, First Consul, under his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc (general, born 1772), Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in an attempt to ...

Christiane Taubira Christiane Marie Taubira (; born 2 February 1952) is a French politician who served as Minister of Justice of France in the governments of Prime Ministers Jean-Marc Ayrault and Manuel Valls under President François Hollande from 2012 until 20 ...

, then-Member of the

National Assembly of France The National Assembly (, ) is the lower house of the Bicameralism, bicameral French Parliament under the French Fifth Republic, Fifth Republic, the upper house being the Senate (France), Senate (). The National Assembly's legislators are known ...

for Guiana, requested in 1999 that the name be changed. Multiple proposals were submitted, including Cépérou, a seventeenth-century indigenous chief. It was finally renamed

Félix Éboué Adolphe Sylvestre Félix Éboué (; 26 December 1884 – 17 May 1944) was a French Guiana, French French colonial empires, colonial administrator and early adherent to the Free French Forces, Free French Movement. He was the first black Fren ...

Airport in 2012, the change becoming official in January of that year. The

code In communications and information processing, code is a system of rules to convert information—such as a letter, word, sound, image, or gesture—into another form, sometimes shortened or secret, for communication through a communicati ...

for the airport remains CAY. Félix Eboué Airport serves approximately 400,000 passengers per year.

Facilities

The airport has an elevation of above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has one paved

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

. It is open to public air traffic and international air traffic.

Airlines and destinations

Statistics

References

External links