Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Virgin Gorda Airport (TUPW/VIJ) is a small unpaved airstrip serving Spanish Town on the island of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. It is a single-runway field handling light commuter and charter traffic from San Juan and neighbouring islands, and offers a straightforward if unassuming VFR destination for pilots visiting this part of the Caribbean.
Virgin Gorda Airport, also referred to by its IATA code VIJ, is a small public airfield on the island of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, serving the settlement of Spanish Town. It is owned and operated by the Government of the Virgin Islands (UK) and has historically supported short-hop commuter and charter services linking the island to San Juan, Tortola and other nearby islands. For a simulator pilot the field is of interest as a compact, single-runway Caribbean strip with a long history of small STOL-capable commuter types operating in and out of it.
The airfield lies on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom, close to Spanish Town. No specific airspace classification, FIR boundary or nearby controlled airspace detail is given in the available sources.
Virgin Gorda Airport has a single physical runway, 03/21, of unpaved surface and lit. Declared length is 2,727 feet for runway 03 and 2,918 feet for runway 21. Field elevation is 10 feet. There is no ILS at the airport.
No communications frequencies are published for Virgin Gorda Airport, and there is no ILS or other instrument approach aid noted for the field.
Virgin Gorda Airport has long served as the air link for Spanish Town and the wider island. In earlier decades it saw code-share commuter services from San Juan, including American Eagle flights operated by Executive Airlines using CASA 212-200 twin turboprops, and Eastern Express services flown by Sunaire (a Metro Airlines subsidiary) using de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otters on STOL operations. Other carriers that once served the field with Twin Otters included Crown Air/Dorado Wings and Virgin Island Airways, while Dorado Wings had earlier used smaller Britten-Norman BN-2 Islanders. Air BVI, based on nearby Tortola, also flew Islanders into Virgin Gorda, including a very short shuttle service to Beef Island Airport with a one-way flight time of about five minutes according to a 1980 timetable. Vieques Air Link flew Islanders and Air Sunshine operated Cessna 402s into the airport in the late 1990s. The Government of the Virgin Islands (UK) purchased the airport from Little Dix Bay Resort in 2005. The airport was closed in January 2010 for major construction work and reopened in December 2010 under new limitations and restrictions imposed by the BVI Air Safety Support International (ASSI) regulatory agency, which restricted operations to airlines fully approved by both ASSI and the FAA.
The runway remains an unpaved sand and gravel strip. Operators noted as serving the airport include Cape Air and Charter Flights Caribbean on scheduled or semi-scheduled routes to San Juan, Tradewind Aviation on a seasonal basis to San Juan, and Trans Anguilla Airways linking the field to Anguilla and Tortola. Air Sunshine and, from 2000, Island Birds Air Charter have also operated on-demand charter services into the airport. Flights resumed at Virgin Gorda Airport after a pandemic-related suspension, with Tradewind Aviation operating the first flight to land there since March 2020. Prior permission is required for operations at the field given its restricted status.