Skukuza Airport is the only commercial

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

Kruger National Park Kruger National Park () is a national park in South Africa covering an area of in the provinces of Limpopo and Mpumalanga in the country's northeast. It extends from north to south and from east to west. The administrative headquarters are i ...

, located near

Skukuza Skukuza (formerly Reserve, Sabi Bridge and Sikhukhuza), a town in Mpumalanga located 57 km east of Hazyview at the confluence of the N'waswitshaka River, N'waswitshaka and Sabie Rivers, is the administrative headquarters of the Kruger Natio ...

, in the

Mpumalanga Mpumalanga () is one of the nine provinces of South Africa. The name means "East", or literally "The Place Where the Sun Rises" in the Nguni languages. Mpumalanga lies in eastern South Africa, bordering Eswatini and Mozambique. It shares bor ...

province in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. The airport was established in 1958 and was named in honour of James Stevenson-Hamilton, the first warden of the Kruger national park. In 2018, the airport was dubbed "the prettiest airport in the world" by ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

''.

Facilities

The airport has a small retail gift shop as well as a coffee shop and bar for visitors waiting for their flights. Three check-in counters are available, and there are couches available as well. Only daytime parking is available (no overnight).

Ground transport

Avis Car Rental Avis Car Rental, LLC is a Global car rental company headquartered in Parsippany–Troy Hills, New Jersey, Parsippany, New Jersey. Along with Budget Rent a Car, Budget Truck Rental and Zipcar, Avis is a unit of Avis Budget Group. Avis Budget ...

runs the car rental facilities at both Skukuza camp and Skukuza Airport. In addition to the rental facility at the airport, they provide a shuttle service to the main Skukuza camp. Lion Sands Reserve provides free shuttles from Skukuza airport for guests to the reserve.

Runway

The airport is at an

elevation The elevation of a geographic location (geography), ''location'' is its height above or below a fixed reference point, most commonly a reference geoid, a mathematical model of the Earth's sea level as an equipotential gravitational equipotenti ...

of above

mean sea level A mean is a quantity representing the "center" of a collection of numbers and is intermediate to the extreme values of the set of numbers. There are several kinds of means (or "measures of central tendency") in mathematics, especially in statist ...

. It has one

runway In aviation, a runway is an elongated, rectangular surface designed for the landing and takeoff of an aircraft. Runways may be a human-made surface (often asphalt concrete, asphalt, concrete, or a mixture of both) or a natural surface (sod, ...

designated 17/35 with an

asphalt Asphalt most often refers to: * Bitumen, also known as "liquid asphalt cement" or simply "asphalt", a viscous form of petroleum mainly used as a binder in asphalt concrete * Asphalt concrete, a mixture of bitumen with coarse and fine aggregates, u ...

surface measuring . The runway is sloped, putting the northwest end at elevation and the southeast end at . Landing permission is handled by the Skukuza AP management company.

Airlines and destinations

The only commercial flights to Skukuza are offered by Airlink, with a single daily flight to

Cape Town Cape Town is the legislature, legislative capital city, capital of South Africa. It is the country's oldest city and the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. Cape Town is the country's List of municipalities in South Africa, second-largest ...

and two daily flights to

O. R. Tambo International Airport O. R. Tambo International Airport is an international airport serving the twin cities of Johannesburg and the main capital of South Africa, Pretoria. It is situated in Kempton Park, Gauteng, Kempton Park, Gauteng. It serves as the primary air ...

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

. Private and charter flights are also available, but as Skukuza has a limit of 10 landings and 10 takeoffs per day between the hours of 09:00 and 15:00, slots are limited. Flights are also required to take specific paths in order to reduce noise in sensitive natural areas.

History

Skukuza Airport was established in 1958 and began operating in 1959. In 2001, commercial flights were discontinued due to the opening of Kruger Mpumalanga International Airport near

Nelspruit Mbombela, formerly Nelspruit, is a city in northeastern South Africa. It is the capital of the Mpumalanga province. Located on the Crocodile River, the city lies about by road west of the Mozambique border, east of Johannesburg and north of ...

. Charter flights were still accepted at the airport if scheduled ahead of time. Commercial flights were reopened in the second half of 2013, and management of the airport was handed from South African National Parks to a private operator, the Skukuza Airport Management Company, which is jointly owned by Lion Sands Reserve, Federal Air and Airlink. The airport is assigned to be able to handle a maximum of six scheduled flights a day, with a maximum of 30 per week. Up to four charter flights are allowed each day. In January 2014, construction commenced on a major renovation, and the airport reopened on 2 June 2014. The airport has also been continuously used by the

South African Air Force The South African Air Force (SAAF) is the air warfare branch of South African National Defence Force, with its headquarters in Pretoria. The South African Air Force was established on 1 February 1920. The Air Force saw service in World War II a ...

for anti-poaching efforts.

Gallery

References

External links

Skukuza Airport

Skukuza Airport a beauty
* * {{authority control Airports in South Africa Transport in Mpumalanga Buildings and structures in Mpumalanga Kruger National Park Mbombela