Warri Airport

Warri Airport / Osubi Airstrip
IATA: QRW – ICAO: DNSU
QRW
Location of Airport in Nigeria
Summary
Airport type Public
Owner/Operator Shell
Serves Warri, Nigeria
Location Osubi
Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
06/24 1,800 5,906 Paved
Sources: FAAN [1]

Osubi Airstrip (IATA: QRW), also known as Warri Airport , is located at Osubi, a town near Warri in Delta State, Nigeria. It has a runway of about 1.8 kilometres (1.1 mi) and is about 5 minutes drive by car from the city of Warri.

The federal government first drew up plans to build an airport here in the late 1970s to easy transport into Warri city by air because of its status as an oil city but languished the Plan for over two decades in a mixture of neglect and corruption. Meanwhile, people coming in and out of Warri continued to use an old airstrip, in a congested part of the city. The airstrip could only accommodate small air craftson its runway of about 0.7 km which was so short that whenever a plane took off or landed,[2] the authorities had to close off an adjacent road to traffic so that a passing car would not be clipped.

Finding it harder and harder to conduct business with the old airstrip, Shell finally decided to build one on its own. The airport as commissioned and open for commercial use on 1 April 1999 with Shell (SPDC) landing a modern Dornier 328 and aero contractors 50-feet Dash aircraft at the Osubi airport. Since the airstrip opened for Public use; it is reckoned to be one of the busiest aviation facilities in Nigeria[3] and it is being operated in partnership with other oil companies.

The maintenance and facilities are among the best in the country and traffic flow is one of the highest. In fact, in the first six months of the opening of Osubi Airstrip, more than 100,000 passengers passed through just as it handled 3,500 aircraft movements.

There is presently an out cry to the federal government to upgrade the status to that of an airport because of the increase in air traffic, While the Delta State Government is planning to add a longer second runway of 4.2 km.

Airlines and destinations

Airlines Destinations
Aero Contractors Lagos, Port Hartcourt
Arik Air Abuja, Lagos, Port Harcourt

References

  1. ^ Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN): Warri Airport
  2. ^ "That's No Airport. In Nigeria, It's a Grand Illusion.". New York Times. May 26, 1999. http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/nigeria.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-13. 
  3. ^ "The Osubi Airstrip Success Story". Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria. October 2001. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30. http://web.archive.org/web/20070930153917/http://www.shell.com/static/nigeria/downloads/pdfs/8osubi.pdf. Retrieved 2008-01-13. 

External links