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
Location Osubi, Nigeria
Coordinates 05°35′50″N 005°49′10″E / 5.59722°N 5.81944°E
Runways
Direction Length Surface
m ft
06/24 1,800 5,906 Paved
Statistics (2009)
Passengers 417,041
Sources: FAAN[1][2]

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 10 minutes drive by car from the city of Warri.

Airstrip

Prior to construction of the airport, a small air strip had been created next to a congested part of the city of Warri during the 1960s. The runway was approximately 0.7 km in length. There was a small terminal building and an aircraft hangar. Small charter aircraft of Aero Contractors and other firms provided services to and from Lagos airport and other Nigerian cities.

Construction of the airport

Piper PA-23 Aztec of Aero Contractors (Nigeria) at Warri airstrip in May 1970

The federal government first drew up plans to build an airport here in the late 1970s to allow easy transport into Warri city by air because of its status as an oil city, but the Plan languished for over two decades. 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 aircraft on its short runway so that whenever a plane took off or landed,[3] 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 decided to build one on its own. The airport was 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[4] 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.

The Delta State government is making plans with the airstrip operators Shell in upgrading and building a longer second runway of 3.7 km due to the increase in air traffic.

Airlines and destinations

Airlines Destinations
Aero Contractors Lagos, Port Harcourt NAF Base
Arik Air Abuja, Lagos

References

  1. ↑ Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN): Warri Airport
  2. ↑ List of the busiest airports in Africa
  3. ↑ "That's No Airport. In Nigeria, It's a Grand Illusion.". New York Times. May 26, 1999. Retrieved 2008-01-13.
  4. ↑ "The Osubi Airstrip Success Story" (PDF). Shell Petroleum Development Co. of Nigeria. October 2001. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-30. Retrieved 2008-01-13.

External links