The Rio Hato airfield, a temporary expedient?

(PanamaNewsRoom) It has at last been announced that the New International Airport serving the centre of the interior of Panama, and in particular the Pacific beaches, will be built around the old American constructed runway at Rio Hato.

Strategically, this is not the best place for it. Flights will inevitabley have to overfly the beaches, which the airport is set to serve; and from information I received 18 months ago, this was not President Martinelli’s first choice.
However when you are looking for private investment, compromise is regrettably often the result. A new airport on a green field site would be vastly more expensive to construct and would not be financially viable for many years to come, putting it out of court from a practical investment point of view.
So you are faced with a chicken and egg scenario. You need the incoming flights to boost the tourism industry in the area, but you first need a large tourism industry to make an airport viable.

Santiago and Aguadulce were both hoping for it, but the ideal choice was always going to be closer to Penonome.
Taking any particular vested interest out of the equation, I always thought that the runway should have run parallel to the PanAmerican highway somewhere between Anton and Penonome. The land is flat, the orientation of the runway would be correctly North/South for the prevailing winter and summer winds, and it would be close to, but not interfering with, the Pacific beaches it is intended to serve.

The upside of Rio Hato, which clearly influenced the decision, is that the runway is already there, making a huge cost saving. Clearly a major resurfacing needs to take place, and a tunnel is to be constructed under the Panamerican highway. But we can have an airport up and running in a very short period of time.
I would hope that this would prove to be a temporary expedient, and that once the tourism industry in the area has grown sufficiently to support the additional investment, a proper, long term airport is built in a more suitable location, closer to Penonome.

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Original Source: PanamaNewsRoom

Date Retrieved: February 22, 2011