New developments

Upington Airport’s uncommonly long runway and its strategically advantageous location, close to South Africa’s northern borders, makes it ideally placed to serve the African continent. For this reason the airport is to be developed into a major cargo hub that will serve sub-Saharan Africa directly from South Africa’s Northern Cape Province.

As well as improvements to the airport itself ACSA will be preparing land around the airport for development to support the inevitable boost to the local economy.

Planning is also under way at Upington Airport to construct a facility for the long-term parking of mothballed aircraft.
 

Aircraft Storage and Parking Progam at Upington Airport

• As it is a known fact that capacity to keep aircraft parked is a world wide problem and with infrastructure capacity in mind, ACSA decided to invest in researching various strategies in an attempt to utilise the extra capacity that Upington has and to increase the commercial revenue stream of the airport.
   
• The strategy of a parking and storage facility of aircraft was decided and seems to be the most realistic initiative to turn the airport into a profit making airport. It is further believed that this project can contribute to being a catalyst for broader and bigger economic growth in the region as well.

• One major contributing factor that made this option attractive is that this area, besides having the facilities, enjoys extreme warm dry weather conditions that prevail in Upington and surrounding regions with rainfall and strong winds being very limited.
   
• There are hundreds of aircraft standing in Europe and America to name just a few countries which take up valuable airport space and are in a deteriorating state due to wet weather conditions.  Although these aircraft, are not a lost cause in total as these aircraft can be serviced, painted and made operational to fly in other countries where they can be accommodated, like in Africa.