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By Nigel Ash
Tripoli, 4 September 2013:
It appears that Tripoli Airport will not after all, be closing for major runway maintenance for . . .[restrict]three months from 1 October, with all international and domestic flights being moved to Mitiga airport to the east of the capital.
Director General of Libya’s Civil Aviation Authority (LYCAA), Captain Nasereddin Shaebelain told the Libya Herald this evening that the Mitiga move had not been decided but there were plans instead to use Tripoli’s second runway for all flights, while major repairs were undertaken to the main strip. He added that before this could happen, the second runway would itself have to undergo some repair work.
The proposed move to Mitiga, announced last month by a senior source at the Ministry of Transport, caused widespread consternation. The airport is currently used by Buraq Air for scheduled flights and a number of charter companies servicing the oil industry, including Petroair, which is based there. Most government ministers and visiting VIPs use Mitiga and Libyan Airlines is planning to move some flights there next year, but is still working up the project,
At present Mitiga has just four check-in desks, limited dedicated parking and an extremely dangerous access across the high-speed traffic flows on the dual carriage coastal road. There are also understood to be unresolved issues with Air Traffic Control at the airport.
Perhaps most worrying about the proposed move was that none of the airlines using Tripoli that were contacted by this newspaper, had the slightest idea that the change was in the offing. An Interpol-linked security system had just been set up in the airport.
Abdul Rauf Karrah, the SSC commander based at Mitiga airport, this week told the Libya Herald that he was absolutely against the temporary move, in the main because of the considerable challenge that securing the extensive site would involve. Before Qaddafi came to power, Mitiga was known as Wheelus and was the second largest US airbase outside the United States.
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