Cayenne – Félix Eboué Airport


Cayenne – Félix Eboué Airport is French Guiana's main international airport. It is located near the commune of Matoury, southwest of French Guiana's capital city of Cayenne. It is managed by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of French Guyana.
Air Guyane Express has its headquarters on the airport property.

History

The first airfield at Cayenne, called "Gallion," was built in 1943 in ten months by the U.S. Army Air Corps as a base allowing bombers to reach Africa. Though quickly abandoned upon the completion of the new airport, it can still be found very close to the aerodrome.
The new airport was first given the name "Rochambeau" in reference to Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, commander-in-chief of the French troops in the American Revolutionary War. It was purchased by France in 1949.
This name was controversial because the airport's namesake's son, Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, harshly repressed the Haitian Revolution during the Saint-Domingue expedition. Christiane Taubira, then-Member of the National Assembly of France for Guiana, requested in 1999 that the name be changed. Multiple proposals were submitted, including Cépérou, a seventeenth-century indigenous chief. It was finally renamed Félix Éboué Airport in 2012, the change becoming official in January of that year. The code for the airport remains CAY.
Félix Eboué Airport serves approximately 400,000 passengers per year.

Facilities

The airport has an elevation of above mean sea level. It has one paved runway, designated 08/26, which measures. It is open to public air traffic and international air traffic and is classified as Category A of section D.222-2 of the Code of Civil Aviation and classified SSLIA in category 7. The terminal has an area of 12,000 square metres.
The Cayenne non-directional beacon and VOR-DME are located on the field.

Airlines and destinations

Statistics