Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Piarco International Airport (TTPP) is Trinidad's principal gateway, sited some 30 km east of Port of Spain and serving as the main hub for Caribbean Airlines. For a visiting VFR or IFR pilot it offers a single long hard-surface runway, full ATC coverage, and a mix of scheduled international traffic and general aviation movements from its former south terminal.
Piarco International Airport lies in the town of Piarco, in the Tunapuna-Piarco region east of Port of Spain, and is one of Trinidad and Tobago's two international airports. It is operated by the Airports Authority of Trinidad and Tobago and serves as the primary hub and operating base for Caribbean Airlines, the largest carrier in the Caribbean. For a simulator pilot the field is notable for its single very long runway capable of taking widebody airliners, its Class D control zone, and its long and varied history stretching back to the early days of transatlantic aviation and through wartime military use.
Piarco sits within a Class D Air Traffic Zone (ATZ) extending from the ground up to 2000 feet. The airport is located about 30 km east of Downtown Port of Spain, in the suburban town of Piarco, and is the counterpart to the smaller ANR Robinson International Airport on Tobago. Approach and area control services are provided for aircraft operating in and around Piarco's airspace.
Piarco has one physical runway, 10/28, a hard-surfaced strip measuring 10,446 feet in length. Both directions are lit, and runway 10 is equipped with an ILS.
Pilots should expect the following frequencies at Piarco: Area Control (ACC) 123.7 MHz, Approach (APP) 119 MHz, ATIS 126.7 MHz, Ground (GND) 121.9 MHz, a miscellaneous frequency (MISC) 121.75 MHz, Apron Radio 552.6 MHz, and Tower (TWR) 118.1 MHz. The airport offers a VOR/ILS approach for runway 10 only, and RNAV (GNSS) approaches are available for both runway directions; no Standard Instrument Departures (SIDs) are published at Piarco.
Circuits at Piarco are flown to the left, referenced against the Piarco VOR. Given the Class D ATZ extending from the surface to 2000 feet, arriving VFR traffic should expect to establish two-way contact with the appropriate frequency before entering the zone and to follow ATC instructions for joining.
Piarco Airport opened on 8 January 1931, originally built to serve Venezuela's Compagnie Generale Aeropostale; before this, Queen's Park Savannah, Mucurapo Field, and the Cocorite Docks were used to serve the island's air traffic. During the Second World War the airfield was taken over by the Royal Navy as Royal Naval Air Station Piarco, commissioned as HMS Goshawk on 6 November 1940, and hosted the Fleet Air Arm's No. 1 Observer Training School, with squadrons flying types such as the Supermarine Walrus, Fairey Albacore, Fairey Barracuda and de Havilland Tiger Moth. The station also hosted United States Army Air Forces Sixth Air Force squadrons flying B-18 Bolo aircraft on anti-submarine patrols over the southern Caribbean, alongside United States Navy units, before HMS Goshawk was decommissioned and RNAS Piarco closed on 28 February 1946 and the field returned to civil control. In more recent years, the airport received a European Union grant in December 2019 to fund a large-scale solar panel installation, and was rated the best airport in the Caribbean by Skytrax for three consecutive years from 2021 to 2023.
Piarco today has two terminals: the north terminal handles the bulk of scheduled passenger traffic, while the former south terminal, once the main passenger building, has been renovated into an executive terminal and now serves cargo flights, general aviation and helicopter operations. The airport has two high-speed taxiways and three connector taxiways, and is large enough to accommodate widebody airliners such as the Boeing 747, 777 and 767, and the Airbus A330 and A340. The original control tower at the old terminal is still used for air traffic control purposes, while the tower at the newer terminal handles ramp and runway movement control from a new nine-storey tower opened in 2011.