Peter Zuze Air Force Base is an

airbase An air base (sometimes referred to as a military air base, military airfield, military airport, air station, naval air station, air force station, or air force base) is an aerodrome used as a military base by a military force for the operation ...

located in the city of

Ndola Ndola is the third largest city in Zambia and third in terms of size and population, with a population of 475,194 (''2010 census provisional''), after the capital, Lusaka, and Kitwe, and the second largest in terms of infrastructure development aft ...

in the

Copperbelt Province Copperbelt Province is a province in Zambia which covers the mineral-rich Copperbelt, and farming and bush areas to the south. It was the backbone of the Northern Rhodesian economy during British colonial rule and fuelled the hopes of the immed ...

in northern

Zambia Zambia (), officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa, although it is typically referred to as being in Southern Africa at its most cent ...

. It used to be the premises of the

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport is an international airport located in Ndola, Copperbelt Province, Zambia. It was officially known as Ndola Airport before being renamed in 2011 in honour of Simon Kapwepwe, the nation's former vice ...

until late 2021, when Ndola's airport moved its operations to the west (adjacent to the

Dag Hammarskjöld Crash Site Memorial The Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Crash Site marks the place of the plane crash in which Dag Hammarskjöld, the second and then-sitting Secretary-General of the United Nations was killed on 17 September 1961, while on a mission to the Léopoldville ...

) and this old airport address ceased to be a commercial airport. It now belongs to the

Zambian Air Force The Zambian Air Force (ZAF) is the air force of Zambia and the air operations element of the Zambian Defence Force. Following the creation of the Republic of Zambia in 1964, the former Northern Rhodesia Air Force was renamed as the Zambian Air ...

. On 30 July 2021, President

Edgar Lungu Edgar Chagwa Lungu (born 11 November 1956) is a Zambian politician who served as the sixth president of Zambia from 25 January 2015 to 24 August 2021. Under President Michael Sata, Lungu served as Minister of Justice and Minister of Defence. Fo ...

decided to name this airbase after Zambia's first indigenous air commander, Peter Zuze. On 5 August 2021, President

commissioned the opening of the new airport adjacent to the

, although it took another two months for all operations to complete moving to the new Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport from the old location (Peter Zuze Air Force Base).

History

The current location of the Peter Zuze Airforce Base (in Itawa; south-east of the city centre) was the location of Ndola's Airport (

) from colonial times (1950s) until late 2021, when it moved its operations to a new airport, also in

, approximately west of the city centre by road; just north of the

. That new airport was built to replace this airport as the main airport of the region. The new airport was engineered by the

Aviation Industry Corporation of China Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air craft such as hot air ...

(AVIC International) at a cost of $397 million. It was expected to be completed in Mid-2020 but was delayed by setbacks due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

; the new airport opened the following year instead. While under construction, the new airport's name was ''

Copperbelt International Airport Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport is an international airport located in Ndola, Copperbelt Province, Zambia. It was officially known as Ndola Airport before being renamed in 2011 in honour of Simon Kapwepwe, the nation's former vice p ...

'' and was renamed to Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport upon opening. On 30 July 2021, President

declared the old airport in Itawa as an airbase (handed over to the

) and renamed it the Peter Zuze Air Force Base, named after Zambia's first indigenous air commander, Peter Zuze. On 5 August 2021, President

commissioned the opening of the new airport adjacent to the

and immediately, it took the name ''Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport'' from the old airport address. All operations moved from the old airport in Itawa to the new airport west of the Ndola city centre (although it took about two more months for all operations to complete the relocation to the new airport). So, the name Copperbelt International Airport only applied to the new airport while it was under construction (not in use any longer) and the name Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport remained, meaning that Ndola retained the name that it has been using since 2011 to refer to its International Airport. The new airport also keeps the same

IATA code IATA codes are abbreviations that the International Air Transport Association (IATA) publishes to facilitate air travel. They are typically 1, 2, 3, or 4 character combinations (referred to as unigrams, digrams, trigrams, or tetragrams, respecti ...

. Peter Zuze Air Force Base was accepted as the name of the old airport.

References

External links

OpenStreetMap - Ndola
* * * {{authority control Airports in Zambia Defunct airports Ndola

History

See also

References

External links