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Teniente Rodolfo Marsh Martin Airport (SCRM) is a remote gravel airstrip on King George Island, off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, serving the Chilean settlement of Villa Las Estrellas and the nearby Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base. It is the northernmost airfield on the Antarctic continent and offers a genuinely unusual VFR destination for the simulator pilot, with a single unpaved runway, no ILS, and operations governed by a solitary approach and tower frequency.
Teniente Rodolfo Marsh Martin Airport sits on King George Island in the South Shetland Islands, well south of Cape Horn, and is operated as a public airport by Aeropuertos Chile. It exists primarily to support Villa Las Estrellas, a small Chilean civilian settlement, and the adjoining Base Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva, rather than to handle scheduled airline traffic. For a simulator pilot the appeal lies in its extreme isolation and polar setting: a short gravel strip surrounded by ice and open ocean, with a handful of small buildings, a hangar and a control tower making up the entire airport infrastructure.
The airport lies at 62 degrees 11 minutes south, 58 degrees 59 minutes west, on King George Island within Chile's Antártica commune, making it the northernmost airport on the Antarctic continent. It has no scheduled public air service, and traffic is limited largely to occasional charter flights and government or research-support movements; there are no other airports in the immediate vicinity, and the field sits in an area of largely uncontrolled airspace typical of Antarctic operations.
The airport has one physical runway, aligned 11/29, of unpaved (dirt/gravel) surface. The 11 threshold gives a landing distance of 4172 feet, while the reciprocal 29 threshold gives 4155 feet; both directions are lit. There is no ILS available at the field.
Radio communications are provided on a single frequency of 118.1 MHz, used for both approach and tower services under the callsign Marsh. Pilots should expect to work Marsh Approach and Marsh Tower on this frequency for both inbound and outbound traffic. An NDB (Isla Rey Jorge, ident IRJ) is sited close to the approach threshold, and a co-located VOR-DME of the same ident serves the field, though no instrument landing system is available.
The airport takes its name from Lieutenant Rodolfo Marsh, a Chilean aviator who in the 1930s helped pioneer air routes into the Magallanes Region, largely flying Sikorsky S-43 flying boats. He was killed on 2 June 1937 when his aircraft, the S-43 Chiloe, crashed in bad weather en route from Puerto Montt to Punta Arenas, with the loss of all nine aboard. The airfield has seen at least one notable incident of its own: on 25 February 1992 a Chilean Army CASA 235M-100 with eleven people aboard crashed at the airport, with no fatalities, though the aircraft was written off. In more recent years the field drew international attention in June 2025 when an American pilot attempting to visit all seven continents in a single-engine Cessna landed without authorisation and was detained by Chilean authorities.
Today the airport functions mainly as a support link for Villa Las Estrellas and the Presidente Eduardo Frei Montalva base, with no regular scheduled public service; Aerovias DAP operates occasional charter flights from Punta Arenas. The airport's infrastructure remains modest, comprising a hangar, control tower and a small apron for parking aircraft. Given its remoteness and the specialised nature of Antarctic operations, prior permission is required before any flight to the field.
