Departure
97%
vs 95% ▲ 2
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Nadzab Airport, now officially Nadzab Tomodachi International Airport, lies some 42 kilometres inland from Lae on the Markham Valley floor in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. Built up from a wartime airstrip into the region's principal aerodrome, it offers a single long hard-surfaced runway and serves as the domestic hub for the northern part of the country, with a history stretching back to a 1943 Allied paratroop assault.
Nadzab Airport, redeveloped and renamed Nadzab Tomodachi International Airport in 2023, is the airport serving Lae, Papua New Guinea's second city, in Morobe Province. It began life as a wartime airstrip and grew into a major Allied airbase before being rebuilt as PNG's civil gateway to the Markham Valley and the Highlands. For a visiting simulator pilot it is notable both for its long single runway, a legacy of its wartime and Cold-War-era military past, and for its striking setting between the Erap and Markham Rivers with the Highlands Highway running alongside.
The airport sits at Nadzab, about 42 kilometres outside Lae along the Highlands Highway, on the Erap River some 5 kilometres north of the Markham River, in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea. The settlements of Gabmatsung/Gabmatzung and Gabsonkek lie immediately to the east of the airfield. It functions as the domestic hub for northern Papua New Guinea and, following redevelopment, as an alternate international airport to Port Moresby's Jacksons International.
Nadzab has a single physical runway, 09/27, some 7,990 feet long with a hard surface and runway lighting. There is no ILS.
Radio contact is available on APP 118.6 MHz, ATIS 128.6 MHz, and RDO 120.7 MHz (callsign LAE RDO), with TWR 121.7 MHz for tower communications.
The Erap River runs close to the airfield, with the Markham River about 5 kilometres to the south, and the Highlands Highway passes alongside the airport, all useful features for a pilot orientating visually towards the field. The settlements of Gabmatsung/Gabmatzung and Gabsonkek, on the eastern side of the airport boundary, provide a further ground reference.
Nadzab's aviation origins go back to around 1910, when the Gabmatsung/Gabmazung Lutheran mission established a small airstrip here, used by light aircraft until it became overgrown with kunai grass during the Pacific War. After the Japanese occupation of Lae and Salamaua in March 1942, Allied reconnaissance surveyed the area, and on 5 September 1943 the first parachute jump of the 503rd Parachute Regiment took place at Nadzab as part of the operation to liberate Lae, watched from a circling aircraft by General MacArthur. Following the liberation, the United States Army and the Royal Australian Air Force built Nadzab into a substantial airbase, with two parallel runways, Number 1 Strip to the north and Number 2 Strip nearer the Markham River, supporting numerous USAAF bomb groups and RAAF units as a forward operating and staging base against Japanese positions. Towards the end of the war the 21st Air Depot Unit used the site for storage, reclamation and salvage of aircraft, and the Combat Replacement Training Center flew from the base until 1945, when it passed to the New Guinea government. In 1962 the main strip was resealed and lengthened by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Works with a view to accommodating Mirage fighters, though these never materialised, and the airfield was thereafter maintained by the Australian Department of Civil Aviation as a weather alternate to Lae. Nadzab was redeveloped by Australia in the early to mid-1970s as part of an independence gift to Papua New Guinea, with specialised lighting installed by DCA engineers Byron Sullivan and Frank Martinelli, and it took over from Lae Airfield as the main airport in 1977, amid fierce political disagreement between supporters of the two sites that persisted until the old Lae terminal burned down in 1982 in circumstances that were never resolved. The airport was renamed Nadzab Tomodachi International Airport in 2023 following major Japanese-funded redevelopment.
Nadzab, now Nadzab Tomodachi International Airport, is served by Air Niugini with flights to Buka, Hoskins, Lorengau and Port Moresby, by PNG Air to Alotau, Goroka, Hoskins, Madang, Popondetta, Port Moresby and Rabaul, and by North Coast Aviation on regional routes to Bulolo, Finschhafen, Kabwum, Lablab, Omora, Satwag, Wau and Yalumet. The former East Base runways, once Number 1 and Number 2 Strips, remain in use for civil aviation, principally serving Lae, some 45 kilometres away.
