Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Sir Seretse Khama International Airport at Gaborone is Botswana's principal international gateway, serving as the hub for Air Botswana and home to the Botswana Defence Force Air Wing's VIP Flight Wing. For the visiting VFR or IFR pilot it offers a single long, hard-runway with an ILS and a full air traffic control service, making it a straightforward though busy destination in southern Africa.
Sir Seretse Khama International Airport (ICAO: FBSK, IATA: GBE) is the main international airport serving Gaborone, the capital of Botswana. It is operated by the Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana and acts as the hub for the national carrier, Air Botswana, as well as the home base for the Botswana Defence Force Air Wing VIP Flight Wing. Named after Sir Seretse Khama, the country's first president, the airport is of interest to a visiting sim pilot both as the busiest aerodrome in Botswana and as the site of a well-documented apron accident involving a commandeered airliner in 1999.
The airport lies close to Gaborone; the Civil Aviation Authority of Botswana places it about 10 kilometres north of the city, while other accounts give a distance of up to 15 kilometres from downtown. It is a controlled aerodrome, with its own approach and tower/ground services identified under the callsigns Gaborone Approach and Khama Tower/Ground, indicating that arriving and departing traffic operates within controlled airspace under ATC direction rather than in an uncontrolled environment.
The field has a single physical runway, 08/26, oriented east-west. It is 13,123 feet (4,000 metres) long, has a hard surface, and is lit. An ILS is provided, associated with runway 08, giving instrument approach capability to that end of the runway.
Pilots should expect to work Gaborone Approach on 128.2 MHz for arrival and departure sequencing. On the ground and in the immediate vicinity of the field, Khama Ground operates on 121.9 MHz and Khama Tower on 118.3 MHz. The runway 08 approach is served by an ILS.
As a controlled aerodrome with dedicated approach, tower and ground frequencies, traffic at Sir Seretse Khama is managed under ATC instruction rather than by a published standard overhead join; pilots should expect to receive routing and sequencing from Gaborone Approach and Khama Tower rather than flying a self-positioned visual circuit. No specific circuit height, joining procedure or noise abatement detail is available.
The airport opened in 1984 and was named after Seretse Khama, Botswana's first president, who led the country to independence in 1966. British Airways began flying to the field in 1987, routing from London Heathrow via Johannesburg, but withdrew the service in April 1999. Later that year, on 11 October 1999, Air Botswana captain Chris Phatswe commandeered a parked ATR 42 without authorisation and took off, subsequently threatening by radio to crash into other aircraft on the apron. After roughly two hours airborne he carried out two loops before crashing at around 200 knots into two other Air Botswana ATR 42s parked on the ground; the captain was killed but there were no other casualties, and the airline's operations were severely disrupted as a result. In 2008 the airport underwent a major expansion, during which the existing runway was rehabilitated and a 4,000-metre parallel taxiway was constructed, alongside a substantial enlargement of the terminal building and installation of new baggage and screening equipment.
Sir Seretse Khama International remains the busiest airport in Botswana and serves as the hub for Air Botswana, with other scheduled carriers including Airlink, Ethiopian Airlines and South African Airways operating services to destinations such as Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Harare, Lusaka, Windhoek, Maun, Kasane, Francistown and Addis Ababa. The Botswana Defence Force Air Wing's VIP Flight Wing is also based at the field.
