No volcanos, fewer tower blocks - Ecuador lands a 'safer' airport for Quito

No volcanos, fewer tower blocks - Ecuador lands a 'safer' airport for Quito

Scary flights at Mariscal Sucre end next week as airport transfers out of town but pilots dispute take-offs or landings will be less hairy

Jonathan Watts in Quito
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 February 2013 06.11 EST



One of the world's most spectacular and stomach-churning aircraft descents will be consigned to history next week when Quito closes an airport wedged between volcanoes and tower blocks high in the windswept Andes.

The Mariscal Sucre international airport, which serves the Ecuadorean capital, has long been notorious for difficult flight paths and treacherous weather that have together contributed to nine fatal accidents in the past 30 years.

To land, pilots have to bank around heavily populated mountain slopes and then dip down onto a 2 mile (3km) airstrip that is boxed inside the city centre. To clear the ridges after take-off, they have to pull up sharply which strains engines that cannot run at full capacity because of the thin air at this 2,800 metres (9,100ft) altitude.

Since it opened in 1960, such challenges have become familiar to airline crews in Latin America that serve this busy airport, which has an average of 220 flights a day and about 10m passenger movements a year.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/07/volcanos-ecuador-airport-quito