Perched on the western tip of Ecuador’s coastal Manabí province is a small regional airport on which the country’s hopes of becoming a major connecting hub for Asian traffic travelling to South America are pinned.
Built in 1978 as a military airbase, Manta’s Eloy Alfaro Airport is a quiet gateway handling a mixture of military and domestic civilian traffic bound for Quito, but the Correa government wants this all to change with its transformation into an international hub with a long-haul network to rival that of neighbours Bogotá, Lima and São Paulo.
And the reason it elicits such high hopes? It’s simply a case of location – Manta is the closest airport in South America to Asia, 25 miles from international routes connecting the continent to North America and Europe and it’s just 24 hours from the Panama Canal – making it potentially a very attractive stop-off point for business and tourism traffic alike.
“We hope Manta will become the principal airport for flights to South America from Asia; it is the closest place in South America to China,” says Ecuador’s Tourism Minister, Freddy Ehlers.
This vision would see carriers flying from Asia or the Middle East as a feeder point to Manta via a stop-off in Tahiti to refuel, with Manta then feeding traffic across the continent, and the Ecuadorian government is now actively seeking out airlines willing to operate such a route.
“We have excellent weather 99% of the year at Manta, there are no problems for airlines to land at this airport. It is possible to easily build a second runway and develop its 70 hectares of surface area,” enthuses Ehlers.
The Ecuadorian government has already pledged $30.4 million to expand Manta’s terminal, lengthen the runway from 1,900 to 3,500 metres and is seeking to increase traffic from 290,000 to 1mppa, but now an international partner is being sought to take this project further.
As a leading international exporter of agricultural goods and fresh seafood, and with its varied cultural mix of native and Spanish traditions and the fact that there are no visa requirements for visitors, makes Ecuador what Ehlers calls the ‘Singapore of South America’ – a destination that can appeal to tourists and businesses alike.
And if recent figures are anything
to go by, it seems Ecuador’s popularity
is growing.
In the first four months of 2011, Ecuador welcomed 366,960 tourists,
an 8.6% increase on the same period
a year ago. In 2010, it welcomed some 1.1 million tourists, with most arrivals coming from the US (250,000), Colombia (200,000) and Peru (150,000), a significant number considering Ecuador’s population only stands at 14 million.
“Outside South America, Europe is important to us, with our main countries of entry being Germany, the UK, Spain and France, and we are very much interested in opening two new markets: the Scandanavian countries and Mexico following Aeromexico’s launch of Shanghai flights,” Ehlers says.
Key attractions include the capital Quito, which boasts a combination of stunning historical architecture, such as Basílica del Voto Nacional, Church of El Sagrario, a number of large parks and the buzz of the week-long Fiestas de Quito in November.
With approximately 50% of its land mass covered by the Amazonian Rainforest, Ecuador is one of the most biologically diverse countries in the world, with more than half of the world’s plant and animal species.
Visitors can choose from 11 national parks, including the almost 1,000km of untouched habitat of the Yasuni National Park, or go to one of the many beaches along Ecuador’s coastline, which stretches for 1,000km.
Then there is the summit of Chimborazo, a 4,000m summit in the Ecuadorian Andes, which as Ehlers explains has an unusual claim to fame due to its position on a 26-mile bulge in the Equator.
“Few people know that Ecuador is the closest place on earth to the sun, the distance between the sun and the earth at the top of the tallest mountain is shorter than at Everest,” he explains.
Another little known fact about Ecuador, explains Ehlers, is that it was the real birthplace of the Panama hat. The story goes back to the early 1900s when Ecuadorian traders sold the white brimmed hats to workers building the Panama canal.
Made from the palm-like Paja Toquilla plant, the hats proved durable but also lightweight and have remained hugely popular thanks to endorsement by celebrities from Theodore ‘Teddy’ Roosevelt to Sean Connery, and now Ecuador is looking to make it a magnet for tourism through official recognition as a world heritage item by UNESCO.
“We have already officially presented
it to UNESCO as we believe that this hat is probably the most famous hat in the world, and as it is from Ecuador, it is very important people know that we have started this process,” the minister explains.
But without a doubt, Ecuador’s most famous natural attractions have to be the Galapagos Islands, a chain of rocky islets off the west coast, which suddenly gained international renown following the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 and continue to draw thousands of visitors a year.
But the expansion of Manta is just a part of an ambitious airport development plan unfolding across Ecuador. The small airports of Guayaquil, former airbase Latacunga, Tena and Santa Rosa are among those earmarked for expansion or modernisation and $357 million of government money is being invested between 2007 and 2013.
“Tena for example could be useful for the Amazon jungle, international flights for people interested in jungle trip, charter flights could easily operate from there,” explains Ehlers.
Meanwhile, Quito’s aviation landscape is set to be transformed with the building of the new $680 million Quito International Airport, currently under construction 25km outside the city, which will replace the constricted Mariscal Sucre Airport in April 2012.
Under development by a consortium consisting of Canadian companies Aecon and Airport Development Corporation, Houston Airport System Development Corporation and Brazil’s Andrade Gutierrez Concessões, Quito Airport will have a 4.1km runway and be equipped to handle more than five million passengers and 270,000 tonnes of
cargo each year.
At over 2,400 metres above sea level it is also one of the highest airports in the world; it will become a home base for Ecuadorian carriers AeroGal and TAME.
Meanwhile, Ecuador’s national carrier TAME is also undergoing expansion.
The government-owned carrier operates a fleet of Embraer ERJ170s and A319/320s with a network consisting of 13 domestic destinations and services to Cuba, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.
In October, the carrier took delivery of its first of three ATR 42-500s to increase its domestic network, but with the expansion of Manta and other airports, Ehlers believes TAME could one day become a major player in Latin America. “TAME could in the future become the third biggest airline in South America, after LAN and Avianca, if we can find a joint partner,” says Ehlers.
Ecuador’s other major carriers
include Aerogal, LAN Ecuador, TAM, AeroRepública, American Airlines
and AviancaTaca, but there are also plenty of operations by international airlines, such as KLM, Continental
and Iberia.
Recent route announcements
include a new direct B777 service
by KLM between Schiphol and Quito which began operating on October 28, while Venezuelan-based carrier Conviasa has started services from Caracas
to Guayaquil.
According to Ehlers, the government is also busy pursuing Open Skies agreements with its neighbours
such as Colombia and Peru, to encourage new routes and cut back tariffs. There are even talks with TAP Portugal to establish a cargo base for
the export of seafood straight to markets in Europe.
Without a doubt Ecuador has huge opportunities to further develop its tourism and aviation markets in the coming years.
This article features in Routes News 2011 Issue 6
