Comandante Espora Airport , also known as Bahía Blanca Airport, is a domestic airport in

Bahía Blanca Bahía Blanca (; English: ''White Bay''), colloquially referred to by its own local inhabitants as simply Bahía, is a city in the Buenos Aires Province, Buenos Aires province of Argentina, centered on the northwestern end of the eponymous Blanc ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

, which is served by

Aerolíneas Argentinas Aerolíneas Argentinas, formally ''Aerolíneas Argentinas S.A.'', is the state-owned flag carrier of Argentina and the country's largest airline. The airline was created in 1949, from the merger of Aeroposta Argentina (AA), Aviación del Lito ...

and

LADE Líneas Aéreas del Estado (LADE, ) is an airline based in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. It is owned by the government of Argentina and operated by the Argentine Air Force. It provides domestic scheduled services, mainly in Patagonia. Hist ...

. Espora is also the main base of the

Argentine Naval Aviation The Argentine Naval Aviation (', COAN) is the naval aviation branch of the Argentine Navy and one of its four operational commands. Argentina, along with Brazilian Navy, Brazil is one of two South American countries to have operated two aircraft c ...

, and was given the identifier BACE by the

Argentine Navy The Argentine Navy (ARA; ). This forms the basis for the navy's ship prefix "ARA". is the navy of Argentina. It is one of the three branches of the Armed Forces of the Argentine Republic, together with the Argentine Army, Army and the Argentine ...

History

Comandante Espora Air Naval Base was built in the 1930s to replace the old Puerto Belgrano Air Naval Base, which could not support the newer aircraft that the

was adding. The new base was built in grounds close to the existing Bahía Blanca Airfield (Spanish: ''Aeródromo Civil de Bahía Blanca'', also known as Villa Harding Green), located approximately 5 kilometers from

and 25 kilometers from

Puerto Belgrano Naval Base Port Belgrano Naval Base ( - BNPB) is the largest naval base of the Argentine Navy, situated next to Punta Alta, near Bahía Blanca, about south of Buenos Aires. It is named after the brigantine ''General Belgrano'' (named after Manuel Belg ...

. The new airfield was opened on 16 June 1939.BASE AERONAVAL "COMANDANTE ESPORA" (BACE) - "Histarmar" website (accessed 2015-08-09) Between 1945 and 1964 it was the location of the Naval Aviation School, and in 1970 the Naval Aviation Command headquarters were located at Comandante Espora. From 1968 the airport was opened to civil and commercial traffic replacing the old civil airstrip at Villa Harding Green. The installations and runway were expanded and in 1972 were released to the commercial traffic linking the Argentine South. In September 1977, the runways were extended to allow aircraft of

Boeing 767 The Boeing 767 is an American wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. The aircraft was launched as the 7X7 program on July 14, 1978, the prototype first flew on September 26, 1981, and it was certified ...

size.

Airlines and destinations

References

External links

*
Aeropuerto de Bahia Blanca "Comandante Espora"
' at ''Organismo Regulador del Sistema Nacional de Aeropuertos'' * *

Accessed 09-Aug-2015 Airports in Buenos Aires Province Argentine Naval Air Bases Military installations of Argentina {{argentina-airport-stub