Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport , also commonly known as Isla Grande Airport, is an airport in

Isla Grande Isla Grande is a small island and Corregimientos of Panama, corregimiento in Portobelo District, Colón Province, Panama, off the Caribbean coast. It had a population of 1,037 . Its population as of 1990 was 626; its population as of 2000 was 1,05 ...

, a district in the municipality of

San Juan, Puerto Rico San Juan (, , ; Spanish for "Saint John") is the capital city and most populous municipality in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2020 census, it is the 57th-largest city under the juri ...

. It is owned by the

Puerto Rico Ports Authority The Puerto Rico Ports Authority (PRPA) ( es, Autoridad de los Puertos; AP) is a government-owned corporation of Puerto Rico charged with developing, operating, and overseeing all seaports and airports in Puerto Rico. The Authority is ascribed to ...

and is adjacent to the

Puerto Rico Convention Center The Dr. Pedro Rosselló González Puerto Rico Convention Center (PRCC) (or ''Centro de Convenciones de Puerto Rico Dr. Pedro Rosselló González'' in Spanish), or simply Puerto Rico Convention Center, is a convention center located in Isla Gr ...

, the

San Juan Bay San Juan Bay ( es, Bahía de San Juan) is the bay and main inlet adjacent to Old San Juan in northeastern Puerto Rico. It is about in length, the largest body of water in an estuary of about of channels, inlets and eight interconnected lagoons ...

, and the Pan American Cruise Ship Terminal, and overlooks Cataño. While Isla Grande's main activity is

general aviation General aviation (GA) is defined by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as all civil aviation aircraft operations with the exception of commercial air transport or aerial work, which is defined as specialized aviation services ...

, it is still a commercial airport, handling domestic and international commercial flights. It is included in the National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems for 2011–2015, which categorized it as a primary commercial service airport (more than 10,000 enplanements per year).

History

Originally constructed by the

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

as Naval Air Station Isla Grande just prior to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, the facility also served as

Puerto Rico Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...

's main international airport until 1954, when San Juan Isla Verde International Airport (subsequently renamed

Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport ( es, link=no, Aeropuerto Internacional Luis Muñoz Marín) is a joint civil-military international airport located in suburban Carolina, Puerto Rico, southeast of San Juan. It is named for Luis Muñoz ...

in 1985) was built. Until that year, all international airlines, such as

Deutsche Luft Hansa ''Deutsche Luft Hansa A.G.'' (from 1933 styled as ''Deutsche Lufthansa'' and also known as ''Luft Hansa'', ''Lufthansa'', or DLH) was a German airline, serving as flag carrier of the country during the later years of the Weimar Republic and t ...

Iberia Airlines Iberia (), legally incorporated as ''Iberia Líneas Aéreas de España, S.A. Operadora, Sociedad Unipersonal'', is the flag carrier airline of Spain. Founded in 1927 and based in Madrid, it operates an international network of services from i ...

Delta Delta commonly refers to: * Delta (letter) (Δ or δ), a letter of the Greek alphabet * River delta, at a river mouth * D ( NATO phonetic alphabet: "Delta") * Delta Air Lines, US * Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 that causes COVID-19 Delta may also ...

and

Pan Am Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and commonly known as Pan Am, was an American airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial overseas flag carrier of the United States ...

, flew to Isla Grande. Until 1971, the airport also hosted Coast Guard Air Station San Juan. That year, the

Coast Guard A coast guard or coastguard is a maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with customs and security duties to ...

relocated its air station to

Ramey Air Force Base Ramey Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico. It was named after United States Army Air Forces Brigadier General Howard Knox Ramey. Following its closure, it was redeveloped into Rafael Hernandez Airp ...

on Puerto Rico's northwest coast. Isla Grande was renamed in honor of

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

Major Fernando Luis Ribas-Dominicci, an

F-111 The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark is a retired supersonic, medium-range, multirole combat aircraft. Production variants of the F-111 had roles that included ground attack (e.g. interdiction), strategic bombing (including nuclear weapons ca ...

pilot who was killed in action during

Operation El Dorado Canyon The 1986 United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, consisted of air strikes by the United States against Libya on Tuesday 15 April 1986. The attack was carried out by the U.S. Air Force (USAF), U.S. Navy and U.S. M ...

(the 1986 airstrike of

Libya Libya (; ar, ليبيا, Lībiyā), officially the State of Libya ( ar, دولة ليبيا, Dawlat Lībiyā), is a country in the Maghreb region in North Africa. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Suda ...

). A controversy regarding Isla Grande and

Dorado Airport Dorado Airport or Dorado Beach Airport was a small single runway airport in Dorado, Puerto Rico. Clara Livingston, the owner of the property at the time, ordered the strip be built, and her friend, Amelia Earhart, may have used the facility a ...

surfaced in 2003. Dorado Airport wanted to expand and attract the private aviation sector that has been Isla Grande's main business for so long. Dorado airport eventually became a victim of urban development in Dorado and no longer exists. On October 26, 2003, the airport made history by becoming the first Puerto Rican site of a

SCCA The Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) is a non-profit American automobile club and sanctioning body supporting road racing, rallying, and autocross in the United States. Formed in 1944, it runs many programs for both amateur and professional ...

Grand Prix race. In 2006, after a detailed impact study and many rumors about the future of the airport, the

announced that Isla Grande airport would remain open for the foreseeable future, mostly because of its key function as the primary reliever for the Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. On August 4, 2011 the FAA announced that they were planning to close the airport's control tower due to budget cuts, since they operate it instead of the Puerto Rico Ports Authority. On July 8, 2012 airport officials denied via written communication to a local newspaper of "any plans to eliminate or privatize the airport, since the airport is one of the most important airports for general aviation on Puerto Rico, taking into account that its operation approximates around 300 daily operations." On that same newspaper it was published that

Seaborne Airlines Seaborne Virgin Island Inc, operating as Seaborne Airlines, is a FAR Part 121 airline headquartered in Carolina, Puerto Rico, near the territory's capital of San Juan. It operates a seaplane shuttle service between St. Croix and St. Thomas. ...

, a regional air carrier, would transition its scheduled passenger operations to the neighboring San Juan

Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport Luis is a given name. It is the Spanish form of the originally Germanic name or . Other Iberian Romance languages have comparable forms: (with an accent mark on the i) in Portuguese and Galician, in Aragonese and Catalan, while is archaic ...

(SJU) with complete pullout on January 16, 2013."Niegan el cierre del Aeropuerto de Isla Grande
, Vocero de Puerto Rico July 8, 2012. For a short period of time between 2007 and 2009, the airport became the flight hub of Puerto Rico's unofficial flag carrier,

Prinair Prinair is a Puerto Rican charter operator airline. It was Puerto Rico's domestic and international flag carrier airline for almost two decades from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. Despite previously ceasing scheduled commercial operations twice ...

, when that airline briefly returned to operating.

Facilities and aircraft

Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport covers an area of at an elevation of above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the '' ari ...

. It has one runway designated 9/27 with an asphalt surface measuring . For the 12-month period ending September 30, 2013, the airport had 116,447 aircraft operations, an average of 319 per day: 92%

, 6%

air taxi An air taxi is a small commercial aircraft that makes short flights on demand. In 2001 air taxi operations were promoted in the United States by a NASA and aerospace industry study on the potential Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) ...

, and 2%

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

. At that time there were 232 aircraft based at this airport: 33% single-

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

, 37% multi-engine, 1% jet, 24%

helicopter A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by horizontally spinning rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forward, backward and laterally. These attributes ...

, and 6%

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

Statistics

Puerto Rico Army National Guard Aviation Support Facility

The

Puerto Rico National Guard The Puerto Rico National Guard (PRNG) – es, Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico– is the national guard of the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. The Constitution of the United States specifically charges the National Guard with dual federal and s ...

Aviation Support Facility is the only military site on Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport. Its mission is to support the

Puerto Rico Army National Guard The Puerto Rico Army National Guard (PRARNG) — officially designated in Spanish as ''Guardia Nacional Terrestre de Puerto Rico'', but colloquially known as ''Ejército de la Guardia Nacional de Puerto Rico'' — is the Army National Guard of the ...

and the following units: * Company A, 1st Battalion, 111th Aviation Regiment * Company D, 1st Battalion, 114th Aviation Regiment * Detachment 1, Company B, 1st Battalion, 114th Aviation Regiment The military aircraft at this facility are

UH-72 Lakota The Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) UH-72 Lakota is a twin-engine helicopter with a single, four-bladed main rotor. The UH-72 is a militarized version of the Eurocopter EC145, built by American Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters, Inc.), a ...

and UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters and the Beechcraft

C-12 Huron The Beechcraft C-12 Huron is the military designation for a series of twin-engine turboprop aircraft based on the Beechcraft Super King Air and Beechcraft 1900. C-12 variants are used by the United States Air Force, United States Army, United ...

Incidents and accidents

* On October 1, 1942, a

Douglas C-39 The Douglas DC-2 is a 14-passenger, twin-engined airliner that was produced by the American company Douglas Aircraft Company starting in 1934. It competed with the Boeing 247. In 1935, Douglas produced a larger version called the DC-3, which b ...

(DC-2) of the U.S. Army Air Forces flying from Juana Diaz Air Base in southern Puerto Rico to Isla Grande crashed into a hill in

Coamo Coamo (, ) is a town and municipality founded in 1579 in the south-central region of Puerto Rico, located north of Santa Isabel; south of Orocovis and Barranquitas; east of Villalba and Juana Díaz; and west of Aibonito and Salinas. Coamo ...

instead, killing all 22 people on board. * On April 11, 1952,

Pan Am Flight 526A Pan Am Flight 526A, a Douglas DC-4, took off from San Juan-Isla Grande Airport, Puerto Rico, at 12:11 PM AST on April 11, 1952 on a flight to Idlewild International Airport, New York City with 64 passengers and five crew members on board.

crashed into the sea just after takeoff due to engine failure, killing 52 out of 69 passengers and crew. * On December 21, 1991, a

United Airlines United Airlines, Inc. (commonly referred to as United), is a major American airline headquartered at the Willis Tower in Chicago, Illinois.

Boeing 757 The Boeing 757 is an American narrow-body airliner designed and built by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The then-named 7N7, a twinjet successor for the 727 (a trijet), received its first orders in August 1978. The prototype completed its mai ...

flight en route to San Juan's

mistakenly landed at Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport. The aircraft, which was on a chartered flight as United Airlines Flight 5850, was later flown, without any passengers onboard (as the passengers departed from Isla Grande to their hotels by bus), to Luis Munoz Marin Airport. * June 7, 1992: An

Executive Air Executive Airlines, Inc. was a Puerto Rican regional airline headquartered at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the main airport for the United States territory, near the capitol of San Juan. The airline was a w ...

(for

American Eagle The bald eagle (''Haliaeetus leucocephalus'') is a bird of prey found in North America. A sea eagle, it has two known subspecies and forms a species pair with the white-tailed eagle (''Haliaeetus albicilla''), which occupies the same niche as ...

) CASA 212 flying from Dominicci Airport crashed short of the runway in Mayagüez, killing both crew members and all three passengers. * In December 2002, a helicopter that had been rented from a company that operates out of this airport was hijacked and taken to a jail in Ponce, where six inmates boarded the helicopter, forcing the pilot to drop them off at a farm. The pilot was able to fly back after he lied to the prisoners about their whereabouts, making them jump off the helicopter and zig-zagging the helicopter to prevent them from shooting at him. Soon after, all escapees were found by the police. * On January 10, 2015, a

Robinson R22 The Robinson R22 is a two-seat, two-bladed, single-engine light utility helicopter manufactured by Robinson Helicopter Company. It was designed in 1973 by Frank D. Robinson, and has been in production since 1979. Development The majority of fl ...

collided with the ocean (near

Cataño Ferry The Cataño Ferry ( es, Lancha de Cataño) is a single route ferry service between Cataño and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Its route consists of Cataño ⇆ Old San Juan docking at the AcuaExpreso Cataño Terminal in Cataño on the route's southw ...

terminal, San Juan bay) shortly after takeoff due to unknown reasons (as of 9/14/15), killing 1 (student performing a solo flight) and leaving the helicopter damaged beyond repair. *On July 4, 2017, an aircraft that had taken off Ribas Dominicci Airport crashed nearby at a bay. The crash resulted in four injuries.

References

External links

Isla Grande Airport
at OpenStreetMap *
Isla Grande Flying School
* *
Accident Robinson R22 Beta N348VH, 10 Jan 2015
{{Airports in Puerto Rico, state=collapsed Buildings and structures in San Juan, Puerto Rico Airports in Puerto Rico Miramar (Santurce) Closed installations of the United States Navy