Gustavo Rojas Pinilla International Airport (

IATA The International Air Transport Association (IATA ) is a trade association of the world's airlines founded in 1945. IATA has been described as a cartel since, in addition to setting technical standards for airlines, IATA also organized tariff ...

: ADZ,

ICAO The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international a ...

: SKSP) (formerly Sesquicentenario Airport) is the main airport in the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina, one of the departments of

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. It is able to receive large aircraft and to accommodate seasonal and charter flights from different parts of the Americas and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

History

The air terminal was renamed in honor of General

Gustavo Rojas Pinilla Gustavo Rojas Pinilla (12 March 1900 – 17 January 1975) was a Colombian Army general, civil engineer and dictator who ruled as 19th President of Colombia as from June 1953 to May 1957. Rojas Pinilla gained prominence as a colonel during L ...

(1900–1975), former president of

, who ordered the airport built in the mid-1950s in order to link the Caribbean island with the continental territory of Colombia. The original name of the airport was Sesquicentenario Airport.

Description

The airport is the sixth busiest airport in Colombia in terms of passengers, with 2,431,766 in 2019. Most of these passengers come from the continental part of the country, due to poor international direct service to the island. Many international tourists have to fly to one of Colombia's or Panama's largest airports (

Bogotá Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the larges ...

Medellín Medellín ( or ), officially the Municipality of Medellín ( es, Municipio de Medellín), is the second-largest city in Colombia, after Bogotá, and the capital of the department of Antioquia. It is located in the Aburrá Valley, a central re ...

Cali Santiago de Cali (), or Cali, is the capital of the Valle del Cauca department, and the most populous city in southwest Colombia, with 2,227,642 residents according to the 2018 census. The city spans with of urban area, making Cali the second ...

Santa Marta Santa Marta (), officially Distrito Turístico, Cultural e Histórico de Santa Marta ("Touristic, Cultural and Historic District of Santa Marta"), is a city on the coast of the Caribbean Sea in northern Colombia. It is the capital of Magdalena ...

, Cartagena, Barranquilla or

Panama City Panama City ( es, Ciudad de Panamá, links=no; ), also known as Panama (or Panamá in Spanish), is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has an urban population of 880,691, with over 1.5 million in its metropolitan area. The city is locat ...

) to be able to reach the islands, although

Copa Airlines Compañía Panameña de Aviación, S.A., (commonly referred to as Copa and branded simply as "Copa Airlines") is the flag carrier of Panama. It is headquartered in Panama City, Panama, with its main hub at Tocumen International Airport. Copa is ...

and

American Airlines American Airlines is a major airlines of the United States, major US-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, within the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. It is the Largest airlines in the world, largest airline in the world when measured ...

maintain flights to

and

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

respectively. Aircraft up to the size of the

Airbus A340-200 The Airbus A340 is a long-range, wide-body passenger airliner that was developed and produced by Airbus. In the mid-1970s, Airbus conceived several derivatives of the A300, its first airliner, and developed the A340 quadjet in parallel wi ...

can land at the airport.

Airlines and destinations

The following airlines operate regular scheduled and charter flights at the airport: ADZcheckinhall

Accidents and incidents

* On August 16, 2010,

AIRES Flight 8250 AIRES Flight 8250 was a domestic scheduled passenger flight that on 16 August 2010 crashed on landing at night in poor weather on the Colombian island of San Andrés, killing two of the 131 people on board. The aircraft, an AIRES-operated Boei ...

, crashed when on approach to Gustavo Rojas Pinilla International Airport. Two of the 129 passengers and crew on board died. * On September 19, 2013,

flight 1204 from San Jose,

Costa Rica Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...

made an emergency landing at the San Andres Airport after reporting smoke in the cockpit. All 179 passengers were said to be safe and continued to

, their final destination, on a second plane. The aircraft involved in the incident was a

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 ...

.Emergency landing in San Andrés
Spanish

References

External links