El Palomar Airport is a commercial and military airport in El Palomar, Argentina. It is the home base for the 1st Air Brigade ( es, link=no, Primera Brigada Aérea) of the

Argentine Air Force "Argentine Wings" , mascot = , anniversaries = 10 August (anniversary) 1 May (Baptism of fire during the Falklands War) , equipment = 139 aircraft , equipment_label = , battles = * Operation Independence * Operation Soberanía * Falkl ...

, which is mainly a transportation unit. It is located west of

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

, near the El Palomar station of the San Martín railway line. It was created in 1912 to accommodate the Army Aviation School, which was the base for the future Argentine Air Force. Commercial flights in and out of El Palomar were stopped in 2020 amid 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 ...

. As of 2022, commercial flight facilities at El Palomar were reportedly being dismantled and moved to

Ezeiza International Airport Ministro Pistarini International Airport ( es, link=no, Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini) , also known as Ezeiza International Airport owing to its location in the Ezeiza Partido in Greater Buenos Aires, is an international airport s ...

, limiting hopes that commercial flights would return to El Palomar.

Facilities

The airport resides at an elevation of above

mean sea level There are several kinds of mean in mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. ...

and it has one

runway According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a runway is a "defined rectangular area on a land aerodrome prepared for the landing and takeoff of aircraft". Runways may be a man-made surface (often asphalt concrete, as ...

designated 16/34 which measures . It is located 2 km from Acceso Oeste Highway and from San Martín Line's El Palomar station. In February 2017, it was announced that

Flybondi FB Líneas Aéreas S.A., operating as Flybondi, is a low-cost airline in Argentina. The airline, the first of its kind in the country, operates Boeing 737-800 aircraft, with bases in Buenos Aires and Córdoba. All aircraft are registered in Arge ...

, a new

low-cost carrier A low-cost carrier or low-cost airline (occasionally referred to as '' no-frills'', ''budget'' or '' discount carrier'' or ''airline'', and abbreviated as ''LCC'') is an airline that is operated with an especially high emphasis on minimizing op ...

, would use the airport in 2018 as a base to fly to multiple destinations within Argentina.Las polémicas “low cost” llegan a El Palomar
/ref> Another low cost airline,

JetSmart JetSmart Airlines SpA, stylized as JetSMART, is a South American ultra low-cost carrier created by US investment fund (and co-founder of LBM Fermin Ithuralde) Indigo Partners, which also controls low-cost carriers like US airline Frontier Airli ...

, has since arrived at the airport, and began flying international routes.

Airlines and destinations

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the airport was closed to the public, with airlines forced to move to Ezeiza and Aeroparque airports. Currently, no scheduled flights operate at this airport.

In popular culture

The airport stood in for

Santiago International Airport Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

in the 2015 film, ''Colonia''.

References

External links

* * Airports in Argentina Military installations of Argentina {{argentina-airport-stub