Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Comandante Espora Airport lies just outside Bahía Blanca in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, sharing its runways with the Argentine Navy's Comandante Espora Air Naval Base, the main base of Argentine Naval Aviation. For a visiting VFR or IFR pilot it offers a long, well-equipped runway system with an ILS, making it a useful and historically significant stop in the southern Buenos Aires region.
Comandante Espora Airport (ICAO: SAZB, IATA: BHI) is a joint civil-military aerodrome serving Bahía Blanca, Argentina. It shares its runways and infrastructure with the Comandante Espora Air Naval Base, the headquarters of the Argentine Naval Aviation, and also handles scheduled domestic services operated by Aerolíneas Argentinas and LADE. The combination of naval air station and commercial airport, together with its long runways and ILS approach, makes it an interesting and operationally significant field for a simulator pilot flying in the Pampas region of southern Buenos Aires Province.
The airport sits at coordinates 38°43'S, 62°09'W at an elevation of 236 feet, close to the city of Bahía Blanca in Buenos Aires Province. It lies near the site of the former civil airstrip at Villa Harding Green and around 25 kilometres from the Puerto Belgrano Naval Base. As a shared civil and naval facility, arriving traffic is worked by Bahía Blanca approach control before being handed to the tower.
Comandante Espora has three physical runways, all hard-surfaced and lit. The main runway, 17L/35R, is a long strip of around 8,257 feet, with runway 17L equipped with an ILS for instrument approaches. A second runway, 17R/35L, is 4,917 feet long. The third, 06/24, runs approximately 6,487 to 6,488 feet in length. All three runways are suitable for a wide range of aircraft, from light training types to airliners.
Inbound traffic should expect to work Bahía Blanca approach control on 124.8 MHz. Ground movements are handled on 121.9 MHz, with a further radio frequency of 296.5 MHz also listed. The tower operates as Espora Tower on 119.15 MHz. Runway 17L is served by an ILS, allowing instrument approaches to that threshold.
The airfield originated as Comandante Espora Air Naval Base, built in the 1930s to replace the older Puerto Belgrano Air Naval Base, which could no longer support the Argentine Naval Aviation's more modern aircraft. The new base, named after Tomás Espora, a naval officer who fought in the Argentine War of Independence of 1810-25, opened on 16 June 1939 on ground close to the existing civil airstrip at Villa Harding Green, roughly 5 kilometres from Bahía Blanca. Between 1945 and 1964 the base was home to the Naval Aviation School, and in 1970 the headquarters of the Naval Aviation Command were relocated there. From 1968 the field began accepting civil and commercial traffic, superseding the old Villa Harding Green airstrip, and by 1972 it had been released for commercial services linking the south of Argentina. In September 1977 the runways were extended to accommodate aircraft of Boeing 767 size, giving the field its present long runway system.
Comandante Espora remains the principal base of the Argentine Naval Aviation, hosting the Naval Aviation Command headquarters alongside its role as Bahía Blanca's commercial airport. Scheduled domestic flights are operated by Aerolíneas Argentinas, serving Buenos Aires-Aeroparque, Mar del Plata and Trelew, with a seasonal service to San Carlos de Bariloche, while LADE connects the field to Comodoro Rivadavia, Malargüe, Mendoza, Neuquén and Puerto Madryn. The dual civil and naval character of the airport means visiting pilots share the airfield with active naval air operations.