AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Talk Belize Travel Paving the Air Strip in San Pedro

If you have flown on or off Ambergris Caye over the past few weeks, you may have noticed that they are paving the air strip. It is used by the airlines all day...and the pavers need to work during the day. Here are some pretty cool pictures of the airlines and the construction company working together.

Click here to read the rest of the article and see LOTS more photos on San Pedro Scoop

San Pedro Airstrip Upgrade

The San Pedro Airstrip is getting a 3.7 million dollar upgrade. It's part of a COCESSNA project to improve airfields throughout Central America.

Minister of State with responsibility for transport Edmund Castro told us more:..

Hon. Edmund Castro
"San Pedro has the busiest airstrip in the entire region, not just in the country of Belize but it's the actually busier than all the airstrips in Guatemala and neighboring Honduras and so on. So it's very important that we upgrade this airstrip in San Pedro and bring it up to world class standards."

"Basically what we are doing is moving away from the chip and seal or chip and tar situation for the airstrips. We are using the hot mix. The natural transportation of materials out to San Pedro is very costly because everything have to be truck in barge and then pick up from the barge to the plant. So it's a little bit more costly but nevertheless that's the standard now that we are trying to use on all the airstrips in the country because it will lasts longer."

The ragged Belize City airstrip is slated for upgrading next.

Channel 7

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Aerial view of the runway at John Grief II airport in San Pedro, Belize

(Click image for a larger version)

Normally, an airstrip upgrade means improving and airstrip, often making it longer. In this case though, the John Greif airstrip will actually be 500+ ft shorter!! Never in my 37 years of professional aviation have I seen an airstrip/airport immprovement include making an airstrip shorter. As far as I know, when the minister at the time signed the letter of intent for the airstrip upgrade, it implied that it was the WHOLE runway. The "Belize Airports Authority", without any aviation expertise within it's own orginazation, and without operator consultation, called the shots. When the miscalculation was discovered (over 2 months ago), the remaining 500+ feet of paving was not in the budget. So, calling this upgrade anything close to "world class standards" is a bad joke.

Is this true??? What have they done??? Have they displaced the threshold at the sw end? That means that some of the aircraft that have been here before will not be able to return??? We were 3,000' (min for municipal airport) and are now only 2,500'? So we are going backwards.

Mike your a pilot you fly what do you think should be done now??? and how did this happen ?

Yes this is a major screw-up.
But having no aviation experience, but plenty of construction experience...won't they just transition the new paving into the old existing surface? So most will be new surface, and the rest the existing. It's done all the time on highway projects.

Why would they reduce the runway length??

DC

Well, its inexplicable to me, You can not reduce the length, if its not all to be paved the contract must be altered. For safety sake. I am not sure what shape the threshold is in but makes to sense in any context to displace and shorten, if that is what is happening. As you say if its not too bad it could be feathered into the existing work I would think. That 500' off the length is 500' off the safety margin and they usually do land long but they should not, they should be touching down in the first 500' for sure and we dont want a shorter runway. What were they thinking if at all? No pilot made that decision that is for sure.

From what I have read, the runway was not shorted, it was just not resurfaced the last 500 feet. I have been a pilot, though not current, for over 30 years, and have flown into SP hundreds of times. This project was underbid, or something else, for what ever reason. It will be better now than it was before, so whats the big deal ?

No big deal except someone posted it had been shortened and I wanted to know and asked if it was true or not true.

Hah, you guys are discussing the wrong airport..............