Puerto Lempira Airport guide

Puerto Lempira Airport (ICAO: MHPL) serves Puerto Lempira, the capital of the Gracias a Dios Department in north-eastern Honduras. The town sits on the shore of the Caratasca Lagoon, and no paved highway reaches it, so the airstrip is the main link to the rest of the country. Boats to La Ceiba take between seven and 36 hours.

The airfield has one runway, 09/27, about 1,500 metres long with a dirt surface, at an elevation of roughly 10 metres. There is no air traffic controller. A passenger terminal and a control tower were built on the site but are not in use. The airfield also handles general aviation and Honduran Air Force flights, and the strip lies close to the town centre, with schools nearby.

CM Airlines flies to Tegucigalpa, and Lanhsa has flown to La Ceiba. Honduran civil aviation figures record about 9,700 passengers in 2022 on roughly 2,200 commercial flights. Annual traffic was near 18,000 passengers in 2018 and 2019, then fell to about 4,000 in 2020. Responsibility for the site is unclear: the national airports service has said the strip is not under its jurisdiction.