Departure
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MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Desierto de Atacama Airport is the airport serving Copiapó and the wider Atacama Region of northern Chile, situated in desert terrain north of the Copiapó River and inland from the Pacific coast. Opened in 2005 to replace the smaller Chamonate Airport, it now handles narrow-body jet services to Santiago and offers a single long, ILS-equipped runway suited to airliner operations.
Desierto de Atacama Airport (ICAO: SCAT, IATA: CPO) serves Copiapó, capital of Chile's Atacama Region, and the surrounding desert and coastal communities. It was built to replace the older Chamonate Airport, which could no longer accommodate larger narrow-body jets, and today handles scheduled airline traffic to Santiago de Chile. For a visiting simulator pilot, the field offers a single substantial hard-surface runway with an ILS approach, set in the stark, arid landscape of the Atacama Desert.
The airport lies in the desert to the north of the Copiapó River, about 16 kilometres inland from the Pacific coast, in the Atacama Region of northern Chile. It sits between the city of Copiapó and the coastal town of Caldera and the nearby beach resort of Bahía Inglesa.
The airport has a single physical runway, 17/35, some 7223 feet long with a hard surface and runway lighting. Runway 17 is equipped with an ILS approach, giving instrument-approach capability for that direction.
An ILS is available for the approach to runway 17. No specific communication frequencies or callsign are published in the available sources.
Useful visual references when approaching the field include the Copiapó River, immediately to the south, the coastline of the Pacific some 16 kilometres to the west, and the town of Caldera and the Bahía Inglesa resort further along the coast to the northwest, with the city of Copiapó lying inland to the southeast.
Desierto de Atacama Airport opened in February 2005, built to replace Chamonate Airport near Copiapó, which was unable to expand its capacity and could not handle larger narrow-body aircraft such as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737-800.
The airport currently receives scheduled jet services linking Copiapó with Santiago de Chile, operated by JetSmart Chile, LATAM Chile and Sky Airline.