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Jacmel Airport is a small public regional airfield on Haiti's south coast, close to the coastal town of Jacmel and operated by the Autorité Aéroportuaire Nationale. It briefly became a focal point of international attention after the 2010 earthquake, when it served as a key hub for disaster relief flights, and today it supports limited domestic and general aviation traffic as a daylight VFR field.
Jacmel Airport sits just outside the town of Jacmel on Haiti's south coast and is operated by the country's national airport authority, the Autorité Aéroportuaire Nationale. It is a modest single-runway field that, prior to 2010, ranked as the sixth busiest airport in Haiti by passenger volume, and it holds a particular interest for sim pilots as the airfield that became a vital lifeline for humanitarian flights in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake.
The airfield lies on Haiti's southern coast near the town of Jacmel, in the country's Sud-Est (Southeast) Department, some distance from the much larger Toussaint Louverture International Airport at Port-au-Prince. The field sits close to the urban centre of Jacmel, just east of the town itself.
Jacmel has a single physical runway, 02/20, of 2,903 feet with a hard surface. There is no instrument landing system, and the field has historically lacked radar or other radio navigation aids, meaning operations are conducted essentially as a visual, daylight-only airfield.
The published radio facility is a tower frequency of 118.5 MHz. No navaids or instrument approach procedures are available at the field; pilots should plan for VFR arrivals and departures relying on visual reference and radio calls rather than instrument guidance.
No formal published circuit heights or joining procedures are available for Jacmel. The airfield has traditionally operated as a daylight, visual-flight-rules field without the infrastructure to support night or instrument operations, so pilots should expect straightforward visual joining appropriate to a small, uncontrolled or lightly controlled regional strip.
The runway lies close to the coastal town of Jacmel, just east of the urban centre, making the town itself and its coastline useful visual references when inbound. A local road, Route 208, runs past the south end of the runway and can assist with orientation on approach.
Jacmel Airport opened in 2006 to provide domestic air links between Jacmel and Port-au-Prince and other destinations, with scheduled airline service having begun as early as 29 January 2005 with a flight by Tortug' Air. Before the 2010 Haitian earthquake it was Haiti's sixth busiest airport by passenger volume, though it was a modest facility limited to smaller commercial aircraft, with an unlit, unresurfaced runway and a ramp able to hold only five aircraft, and no air traffic control service. Following the magnitude 7.0 earthquake of 12 January 2010, the airfield became a critical hub for disaster relief: Canadian Forces CH-146 Griffon helicopters used it from 14 January to reconnoitre the area, and the first Canadian CC-130 Hercules flight landed on 18 January, despite trees at the approach making landings difficult for larger transports. Canadian soldiers arrived by air on 19 January, on the initiative of Major-General Yvan Blondin, and 8 Air Communications and Control Squadron installed runway lighting that same day to enable round-the-clock operations, with radar control provided by the nearby HMCS Halifax. An air traffic control facility was established, and by 22 January the field was handling up to 160 military and civilian flights daily. Heavy use caused some runway degradation by late January, and after tree clearance to extend overshoot areas, the airfield began accepting C-17 Globemaster heavy-lift aircraft from 20 February. Flight volumes tapered from a wartime peak of around 80 movements a day to 20-40 by March 2010, before the Canadian Forces handed control back to the Autorité Aéroportuaire Nationale. A new terminal building was inaugurated on 9 September 2010 by the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communications, Jacques Gabriel, together with the airport authority's General Manager, Lionel Isaac, alongside a resurfacing of the runway.
After a long period without scheduled services, Sunrise Airways was offering flights between Jacmel and Port-au-Prince three times a week as of April 2022. In the years since the Canadian military withdrawal, the airfield has generally handled only light traffic, having lost the equipment and certification needed for international operations in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 relief effort. More recent reporting indicates continued investment in the runway and supporting infrastructure aimed at restoring the field's usefulness for domestic and potentially international flights, though it remains fundamentally a daylight, visual-flight-rules airfield.
