Entebbe International Airport

Entebbe International Airport is the principal international airport of Uganda. It is near the town of Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and about 41 km, by road, southwest of the central business district of Kampala, the capital of Uganda and the largest city in that country. The coordinates of the airport are 00°02'41"N, 032°26'35"E (Latitude: 0.044721; 32.443055). The headquarters of the Civil Aviation Authority of Uganda were relocated to a new block off the airport highway.

History
The airport was first constructed in 1928/1929: The first aircraft to use the new airfield were RAF Fairey IIIs of the Cairo-Cape flight which landed on the 900 yd grass runway on 17 February 1929. In January 1932 Imperial Airways began to use Entebbe on their Cape-to-Cairo mail services: At this stage, radio was installed. By 1935, the grass runway surfaces had been replaced by murram. In 1944-45 the main runway (12/30) was asphalted and extended to 1600 yd. On 10 November 1951 the airport was formally re-opened after the facilities had been extended further: Runway 12/30 was now 3300 yd, in preparation for services by the de Havilland Comet.

History was made on 7 February 1952, when Queen Elizabeth II took her flight back to London via El Adem, Libya after being proclaimed Queen after the death of King George VI. Finally, the existing control tower of the “old airport” was constructed in 1957/58.

The current passenger terminal building was constructed in the mid to late 1970s, together with runway 17/35; the old runway 12/30 was shortened to its current length. The Old Entebbe airport is now used by Uganda's military forces. It was the scene of a hostage rescue operation by Israeli Sayeret Matkal, dubbed Operation Entebbe, in 1976, after an Arab-German hijacking of Air France Flight 139 following a stopover in Athens, Greece en route to Paris from Tel-Aviv. The scene of that rescue was the old terminal, which was recently demolished except for its control tower. In late 2007, a domestic terminal was constructed at the site of the old airport, leaving the new airport to handle international flights exclusively.

Passenger traffic
Entebbe International Airport served 781,428 international passengers in 2007. The same source places the recorded figure of international arrivals in 2008 at 936,184 (+19.8% vs. 2007). In 2009, the recorded arrivals were 928,754 (-0.8% vs 2008). The decline was attributed to the effects of the Great Recession. The airport handled 1,023,437 international arrivals in 2010, according to published data (+10.2% vs 2009). In 2011, international passenger traffic was estimated to have increased to 1.08 million, an increase of 5.24% compared with 2010. In January 2013, East African print media reported the 2012 international traffic at 1.23 million passengers, an increase of 14% from 2011.


 * International passenger traffic:

Facilities
Passenger facilities include an exchange office and left-luggage office. Entebbe International Airport uses the jetway boarding bridge system.

The head office of the Ugandan Civil Aviation Authority is on the airport property.

Airlines and destinations


Airlines offering scheduled passenger service to non-stop destinations:

Incidents

 * In 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked and taken to Entebbe, and Israeli commandoes rescued the hostages in Operation Entebbe.
 * On 9 March 2009, Aerolift Ilyushin Il-76 S9-SAB crashed into Lake Victoria just after takeoff from Entebbe Airport, Uganda, killing all 11 people on board. Two of the engines had caught fire on take-off. The aircraft had been chartered by Dynacorp on behalf of AMISOM. The accident was investigated by Uganda's Ministry of Transport, which concluded that all four engines were time-expired and that Aerolift's claim that maintenance had been performed which extended their service life or that the work had been certified could not be substantiated.