Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport serves the historic city of Cusco in southeastern Peru, sitting at over ten thousand feet amid the high terrain of the Andes. It is a demanding single-runway field with unusual one-way operating procedures dictated by the surrounding mountains, and it remains the principal air gateway for visitors to Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley.
Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport is the main airport for Cusco, Peru, operated by CORPAC S.A. It is a high-altitude, single-runway international airport that has long served as the principal air link for one of Latin America's most visited tourist regions, connecting Cusco with Lima and other South American cities. For a simulator pilot, the field is notable both for its extreme elevation and for the mountain-constrained operating procedures that make it a genuinely challenging approach.
The airport lies in southeastern Peru, close to the historic centre of Cusco, only about 3.7 kilometres from the city core. It is boxed in by high terrain on three sides, a feature that dominates how the field can be operated and approached.
The airport has a single physical runway, 10/28, with a hard surface and a length of 11,102 feet. There is no ILS available.
Radio services are provided under the callsign Cusco APP on 120.6 MHz for approach, Cusco TWR on 118.1 MHz for tower, with ground on 121.9 MHz and ATIS broadcast on 127 MHz.
Because high terrain surrounds the field on three sides, Cusco operates as a one-runway-direction aerodrome: landings are only authorised from the south, onto runway 28, while takeoffs are only authorised in the reverse direction, from runway 10. This one-way arrangement should be factored into any approach and departure planning, as there is no flexibility to use the reciprocal directions.
The airport takes its name from Alejandro Velasco Astete, the Peruvian pilot who in 1925 became the first aviator to cross the Andes, flying directly from Lima to Cusco. Later that year he was killed while trying to avoid crashing into spectators at an airshow in Puno, and the airport was named in his honour. The field entered service in December 1964. In 1970, LANSA Flight 502 crashed shortly after taking off from the airport, killing 99 of the 100 people on board. The airport was long associated with the now-defunct carriers Aeroperu and Faucett Peru. In 2000 it became the first airport in Peru to make use of jetways. Plans have existed for some years to replace the airport with a new field at Chinchero, construction of which broke ground in November 2021, though the project has faced environmental and heritage concerns, including objections from UNESCO over its potential impact on nearby Inca sites and Machu Picchu.
The airport continues to handle substantial passenger traffic, recording just over three million passengers in 2023, and remains Peru's second most important air terminal. Current scheduled operators include Avianca, JetSmart Peru, Boliviana de Aviacion, LATAM Peru and Sky Airline, flying mainly domestic routes to cities such as Lima and Arequipa alongside a small number of international connections. From late 2026 LATAM is expected to add a range of international routes to Argentina. The runway remains fully paved and is used at limited capacity given the field's confined location near the city centre and its high elevation, which lengthens takeoff and landing distances and reduces climb performance for all aircraft.