Departure
94%
vs 95% ▼ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport is the sole international gateway to Timor-Leste, sited on the western fringe of Dili between the Ombai Strait and the Comoro River. It offers a single east-west runway, 08/26, and operates without an instrument landing system, making it a field where visual flying skills and local knowledge of the terrain and coastline are especially valuable.
Presidente Nicolau Lobato International Airport, historically known as Comoro Airport, serves Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, and is operated by the Air Navigation Administration Timor Leste. Renamed in 2002 in honour of the East Timorese independence leader Nicolau dos Reis Lobato, it remains the country's principal air gateway and the hub for Aero Dili. For a visiting sim pilot it offers a compact single-runway field with a rich and turbulent history, hemmed in by coastline, a river and dense residential development.
The airport lies in the suco of Madohi, part of the Dom Aleixo administrative post in the western suburbs of Dili. It faces the Ombai Strait to the north and west, with the Comoro River running along its eastern side. A residential zone sits immediately north of the runway between the airfield and the strait, containing houses, a small area of farmland, a school, a church and a cemetery, with Beto Tasi Beach lying at the northern edge of this zone.
The airfield has a single physical runway, 08/26, measuring 6053 feet, hard-surfaced and lit. There is no ILS available for instrument approaches.
Comoro Approach and Tower operate on 122.9 MHz, with Comoro Ground on 133.9 MHz. A further frequency, 125.5 MHz, is listed for PCL. There is no ILS at the field.
The Comoro River forms a clear linear landmark along the airport's eastern boundary, while the Ombai Strait and the coastline to the north and west, including Beto Tasi Beach, provide useful visual references when approaching from seaward.
The airport was built before the Second World War by the colonial administration of Portuguese Timor, initially with an 800-metre runway, and soon became the operating base for Transportes Aéreos de Timor (TAT), founded in July 1939 as the colony's national airline. From 1940, Qantas flying boats and later land-based Qantas services used Dili as a stopover on Darwin-Batavia and Darwin-Singapore routes, while Dai Nippon Airways of Japan operated trial flights from Palau. A radio room was established at the Dili post office to communicate with the flying boats using Australian-supplied equipment. TAT also began a weekly land-based service to Kupang using a leased de Havilland Dragon Rapide. On 17 December 1941, Dutch and Australian forces occupied Portuguese Timor and the airport was taken over by the 2nd Australian Independent Company, but on 20 February 1942 an Imperial Japanese Navy invasion force captured the airfield. It was subsequently used as a military airfield by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service and was bombed by Allied aircraft between June 1942 and August 1944. By the war's end the airport lay disused and overgrown, with the Japanese garrison at Dili not surrendering until 11 September 1945. After the war, Baucau Airport, with its longer runway, became the colony's main airport including for international flights, and Dili's airfield was relegated to domestic services; by 1969 TAT was flying from Dili to six other destinations in the colony, and in the mid-1970s it operated scheduled domestic routes to Atauro, Baucau, Maliana, Oecusse and Suai as well as a weekly service to Kupang.
The airport continues to serve as Timor-Leste's principal international airport and is the hub for Aero Dili. An expansion project has been under way to upgrade the runway and associated facilities to meet International Civil Aviation Organization standards, reflecting the current runway's restrictions on payload for Code C aircraft such as the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320.