Wajir Airport was built by an Israel construction Company HZ between l977 and 1978, as a military airbase.
On 7th September 2007 the Airport was officially commissioned by his Excellency the President Hon Mwai Kibaki to accommodate both civil and military aircrafts operations. The Airport is located about 5km West of Wajir town. It occupies a total of 566.48ha and there are plans underway to acquire more land for expansion purposes which would increase it to 801. 77ha the total Airport land.
The Airport has a 2.8km long runway designated as runway 15/33 and eight taxiways, which are already named A- H. The longest taxiway is A (Alpha) which is also parallel to the runway and of the same length.
The Airport which opens daily operations at 0630hours and closes at 1830 hours is open to propeller aircraft at its current state due to loose chips on the runways, taxiways and apron, and its restricted to jet engined aircraft for safety purposes.
It has a terminal building which houses both the arrivals and departure lounges, check in, screening areas and transit areas. The administration wing, police station, immigration, customs and port health are also housed in the same building .On the western side of the building is the borehole which is the only source of water for the Airport.
The control tower and crash gate and fire station are fifty metres south of the terminal building.
The Airport accommodates two military camps within its perimeter fence.Airforce (F.O.B) camp is half a kilometre to the south while Army camp is almost the same distance to the west of the terminal building. Entrance to the Airport is through a single gate manned by armed military officers to double the security standards of the Airport.
It has a work force of about a hundred airport workers ,most of whom are from the police department .However ,several other agencies are represented in the Airport like KAA,KCAA,Immigration,Customs, NSIS,Porthealth.In this case the airport is able to handle international/domestic arrival and departure passenger/cargo aircrafts.
At the moment no passenger Airline has started operating at the Airport apart from Echo flight which lands twice every week to drop or pick its special passengers, mostly NGO'S staff. The other flights are either charter, cargo or military. The Airport handles an average of seven flights a day most of which are cargo.
Local Time: 04:21 AM | GMT: 01:21 AM | Aug 01, 2010
