Departure
99%
vs 95% ▲ 4
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport, on the western side of the island of Roatán in Honduras's Bay Islands, is the main gateway to this Caribbean diving destination and handles a busy mix of domestic and international airline traffic. It offers a single hard-surfaced runway of nearly 6,900 feet, making it comfortably long for the range of turboprop and jet aircraft that serve the island. For a simulator pilot, it is an attractive short-haul or island-hopping destination with dramatic Caribbean coastal scenery on approach.
Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport, commonly known as Roatán Airport, serves the island of Roatán in Honduras's Bay Islands Department, lying in the Caribbean Sea some 50 kilometres off the northern coast of the Honduran mainland. It is named after Juan Manuel Gálvez, president of Honduras from 1949 to 1952, and was previously known as Roatán International Airport. As the principal air link to a popular diving and beach destination, it draws a steady flow of scheduled airline traffic from Honduras, the United States, Canada, El Salvador and Belize, making it a lively and scenic waypoint for a simulator pilot exploring Central American and Caribbean routes.
The airport sits in the western part of Roatán, close to Coxen Hole, the island's principal town. Roatán itself lies within Honduran airspace over the Bay Islands, well offshore from the mainland, with the field acting as the main aerial gateway to the island for both national and international traffic.
The airport has one physical runway, 07/25, of hard surface measuring 6,861 feet in length and equipped with lighting. There is no ILS.
Air traffic services are provided by Roatán Tower, callsign ROATAN TWR, on 118.1 MHz, with ground movements handled on 121.6 MHz.
The airport lies immediately adjacent to Coxen Hole, the island's largest town, which along with the surrounding coastline and the runway's position on the western tip of Roatán provides the principal visual cues for locating and approaching the field.
The airport takes its name from Juan Manuel Gálvez, who served as president of Honduras between 1949 and 1952, and was formerly known simply as Roatán International Airport. It has long served as the main air link between the island and the Honduran mainland and beyond. In 2013 the operator InterAirports completed an expansion and upgrade of the terminal facilities, and further runway extension works were begun from January 2022 with the aim of accommodating higher passenger volumes and intercontinental flights. The airport's history includes several notable incidents: on 18 March 1990 a SAHSA Douglas DC-3 overran the runway on landing and ended up in the sea, with all 32 on board escaping; on 17 May 2019 a private aircraft crashed while approaching runway 25 from the north, with fatal injuries among the occupants; and on 4 January 2022 a LANHSA BAe Jetstream 31 suffered a landing gear collapse on runway 07, without injury to those aboard.
Roatán Airport remains a busy international airport serving both scheduled domestic flights within Honduras and international services to the United States, Canada, El Salvador and Belize, reflecting the island's importance as a tourism and diving destination. It continues to operate as a single-runway field, with recent works aimed at extending the runway to support larger aircraft and greater passenger volumes.