Departure
95%
vs 95%
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Maya-Maya Airport (FCBB) is the principal international gateway to Brazzaville, capital of the Republic of Congo, sitting northwest of the city centre on the north bank of the Congo River basin. It offers a substantial ILS-equipped runway and a parallel second strip, and has a notable history including a major 2010 redevelopment and several serious accidents. For a simulator pilot it presents an interesting mix of African international traffic, a long hard-surface runway pair, and a compact urban setting.
Maya-Maya International Airport, known locally simply as Maya-Maya, serves Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo. It is operated as the country's principal international airport, handling scheduled airline traffic from carriers such as Air France, Ethiopian Airlines, ASKY, Kenya Airways and several regional operators, alongside cargo services. For a visiting simulator pilot the field is notable for its long ILS-equipped runway, its riverside capital-city setting, and a history that includes both a major modern redevelopment and several well-documented accidents.
The airport lies in the Commune de Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, at coordinates 4.2505 degrees south, 15.2515 degrees east, and at an elevation of 1,037 feet. It is positioned northwest of downtown Brazzaville and occupies a fairly central position within the wider Congolese urban area, being surrounded by the capital's suburbs (aeroport-brazzaville.com). The head office of the Republic of Congo's air accident investigation agency, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (BEA Congo), is located on the airport property (Wikipedia).
Maya-Maya has two parallel physical runways. The primary runway, 05/23, is 10,806 feet long, has a hard surface, is lit, and is equipped with an ILS on runway 05. A second parallel hard-surfaced runway, 05R/23L, is 10,791 feet long and lit but does not carry an ILS.
Air traffic services are provided under the callsign Brazzaville. Area control (ACC) operates on 121.1 MHz, Brazzaville TWR also operates on 121.1 MHz, and a Brazzaville INFO service is listed on 549.3 MHz. Runway 05 is served by an ILS.
The airport sits northwest of Brazzaville's city centre and is closely surrounded by the suburbs of the capital, making the built-up mass of Brazzaville itself a useful general reference when inbound to the field (aeroport-brazzaville.com).
The airport underwent major redevelopment in 2010 with the opening of a new 3,300-metre (10,800 ft) runway and a new terminal featuring three air bridges; the older runway was repaired and repurposed as a taxiway. A second phase of the terminal, valued at 160 million US dollars and built by the Chinese firm Weihai International Economic & Technical Cooperative Co., was completed in 2013 (Wikipedia). The airport has been the scene of several serious incidents over the years: on 26 August 2009 an Antonov An-12 crashed on approach after a flight from Pointe-Noire, killing the five Ukrainian crew and one Congolese passenger; and on 30 November 2012 an Ilyushin Il-76T cargo aircraft crashed short of runway 5L while landing in bad weather, coming down in a residential area and killing all six crew along with 26 people on the ground. Brazzaville also featured in the itinerary of UTA Flight 772, the DC-10 destroyed by a bomb in 1989 after departing N'Djamena, and was a scheduled stop on the hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 in 1996 (Wikipedia).
Maya-Maya continues to operate as the Republic of Congo's main international airport, with scheduled passenger services from carriers including Air France, Ethiopian Airlines, ASKY Airlines, Air Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya Airways, Royal Air Maroc, RwandAir, TAAG Angola Airlines, Camair-Co and Trans Air Congo, together with cargo operators such as Cargolux and Etihad Cargo (Wikipedia). Runway surface maintenance has been carried out in recent years, including slip-resistance and rubber-deposit control work on the airfield's runways undertaken by the airport operator AERCO (brazzaville-airport.com). The airport has also conducted aerodrome emergency plan exercises simulating security crisis scenarios (brazzaville-airport.com).
