Dorado Airport
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| Dorado Airport | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| IATA: DDP - ICAO: none - FAA: none | |||
| Summary | |||
| Serves | Dorado, Puerto Rico | ||
| Elevation AMSL | ?? ft (?? m) | ||
| Coordinates | |||
| Runways | |||
| Direction | Length | Surface | |
| ft | m | ||
| 10/28 | 3,500 | 1,066 | Paved |
- This article is about a Puerto Rican airport; for the airport in Bogotá, D.C., see El Dorado International Airport.
Dorado Airport or Dorado Beach Airport (IATA: DDP) is a small airport in Dorado, Puerto Rico. It has no commercial airline service, and it is widely used by private pilots.
The airport was built by the United States military, as a military air base, in 1942. Clara Livingstone also used the airport as a private landing strip, and there are rumors that her friend, Amelia Earhart, may have used the facility as well.
Much later on, a large airline named Caribair (later overtaken by Eastern Air Lines), began flights there. When Caribair became part of Eastern, flights to Dorado Airport were suspended.
During the early 1980s, Dorado was served by Dorado Wings, a small airline that operated commuter flights between Dorado Airport and Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan. The airline operated propeller airplanes.
In 2003, Dorado's mayor announced that he plans to expand the airport to be capable of accepting jets, to make the airport an alternative for airlines flying into Luis Muñoz Marín Airport as well as to the private plane owners that fly into Isla Grande Airport, also located in San Juan. This has made headlines in Puerto Rico, because San Juan's airports' authorities are not sure they want this to happen.
