QUITO, Ecuador
(AP) -- Landing at Ecuador's capital can be a white-knuckle affair.
High altitude, a cramped runway and towering volcanos nearby make it one
of Latin America's most challenging airports for pilots. And the
constant roar of the planes torments those on the ground as well.
That
will change on Feb. 19 as Quito moves its airport to an agricultural
setting 12 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of the city, joining other
cities that have moved - or tried to move - planes further from people.
Mariscal
Sucre airport sat amid cornfields when it was christened in 1960. Over
the years, Quito grew dense around it, turning the airfield into a
notoriously nerve-racking neighbor, with planes booming in and out from
5:45 a.m. until 2 a.m. without rest.
"The
racket of the planes sometimes woke us at dawn," said Maria Davila, 40,
who has lived two blocks from the runway since she was a child. "The
windows of the house would rattle and it seemed they would shatter."
"I
often thought a plane would fall onto my house and kill all my family,"
she added. "The airport has been a bad neighbor, a very dangerous
neighbor."
There are a lot more of those
neighbors than when it opened. Just about 350,000 lived in Quito then.
The population has grown to about 2.2 million now.
Over
the course its life, Mariscal Sucre has seen 10 serious accidents. In
1984, a DC-8 owned by the company Aeca clipped some navigation aids on
takeoff and plunged onto neighboring homes. Forty-nine people were
killed.
Fourteen years later, A Cubana de Aviacion Tupolev 154 failed on takeoff and slammed into the airport's wall, killing 76.
Most
accidents were what the industry calls "runway excursions" - as in
running off the runway. They tend to plague urban airports with minimal
margins for error.
In addition to the cramped
runway and nearby mountains, which force a steep angle of approach, the
airport sits at an elevation of nearly 8,700 feet (2,850 meters), an
oxygen-thin altitude that diminishes aircraft performance on takeoff and
landing.
"You have to think ahead of the
airplane a lot," said Ivan Rivera, an American Airlines captain with
experience flying into Quito. "You have to be aware that those mountains
aren't forgiving."
At that altitude, an
aircraft must be traveling faster than normal at landing, and it takes
longer to take off. And the zigzag, or corkscrew approach, can be
unnerving.
Frequent air travelers, even those
accustomed to the Andes' choppy air currents, can get anxious on
approach to Quito, which handles about 220 departures and arrivals a
day, carrying an average of 451,000 passengers a year.
Growing up with the constant roar of jets surging skyward in their midst has engendered fatalism in some neighbors.
Fernando
Araujo, a 22-year-old university student, plays soccer just outside the
northern end of the runway and said he's not bothered by the gleaming
hulks of steel that pass just over the field.
"I'm
not at all afraid. We're accustomed to the planes' takeoffs and
landings," he said. "Only God knows when we'll be taken, so we're
relaxed."
The new airport at Tababela is built
to handle 290 flights a day and has a runway 4,100 meters (13,450 feet)
long. That's nearly 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) longer the soon-to-be
shuttered airfield.
Other cities in the region
have tried to move airports to less troublesome sites. Honduras is
planning to move most airline flights out of notorious Toncontin airport
in Tegucigalpa, whose short runway and urban location make it the
region's most dangerous major airport by many accounts. It was closed to
commercial jets in 2008 for six weeks after a Taca A320 jet ran off the
runway and into a busy street, killing five, including two on the
ground.
Land disputes, however, have
frustrated efforts to move Mexico City's airport to more spacious
terrain further from the urban sprawl.
Tight
space has led the tiny Caribbean islands of St. Barts, St. Maartin and
Saba to put up with airports widely considered among the most
hair-raising in the world.
Quito's new
airfield, which also carries the name of 19th-century independence
leader Antonio Jose de Sucre, is bordered by cropland and encompasses
nearly 6 square miles (15.5 square kilometers), twelve times the area of
the old airport, most of which will now become a public park.
As
runway becomes grassy esplanade, a flurry of construction is
anticipated nearby. The newly revised code will allow for buildings as
high as 40 stories, up from the current four.
"I
can't even imagine what it's going to be like without all the noise and
fear," said Francisco Cahuines, whose construction supply business
borders the airfield's northern end.
There will, however, be one bigdrawback.
While
the old Mariscal Sucre could be reached from downtown in 20 minutes or
so it will take at least an hour to get to the new airport, and no
train-to-the-plane is yet planned.
