Augusto C. Sandino International Airport
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Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, often called Managua International Airport is the main airport (IATA airport code MGA) in Managua, Nicaragua.
The runway at the airport is 7999 feet long, and has an elevation of 194 feet.
Known before the 1980s as Las Mercadas International Airport, the air terminal was inaugurated in 1968 by Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Las Mercadas was designed to be able to be used by Boeing 707 aircraft.
In the early 1970s, Las Mercadas was expanded to more modern standards, with four health inspectors, eight immigration officers and ten customs inspectors. It was fully equipped with air conditioning, background music, loudspeakers and conveyor belts for baggage handling.
This expanded airport could serve three aircraft at once, and by 1975, PanAm and Iberia Airlines, as well as other, smaller local carriers, flew into Las Mercadas.
When the Sandinistas took power, the airport was given its current name, after Augusto César Sandino, a Sandinista guerilla leader. The Sandinistas did not maintain the airport, and it began to deteriorate, until it was expanded and remodelled in 1996, when, among other things, two new boarding bridges were installed.
Today, approximately 350 people are employed at Augusto C. Sandino International Airport, and Boeing 707s, 727s and 737s can land at the airport.
A large expansion programme was underway by 2003.
The airport has served for a very long time as a hub for Nicaragua's flag carrier, Nica. When Nica became a member of Grupo TACA during the 1990s, the number of important connections to the rest of Latin America from Sandino International Airport grew considerably.
Apart from Iberia, a number of other large international airlines serve the airport, including American, Copa, Delta,Mexicana and TACA. Pan Am no longer serves this airport; that airline went bankrupt in 1991 and its current reincarnation is concentrated on flights across the eastern United States, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic only.
On September 4 of 2004, famous boxer Ricardo Mayorga was arrested by police there as he was about to fly to Las Vegas, Nevada, to train for his fight with Félix Trinidad; Mayorga had been declared a fugitive by Nicaragua's law enforecemnt agencies, and the airport police thought he was trying to escape.