BRIEFS: Tourism

Ipat director suggests new airport for david

La Prensa

boost: Ipat director Rubén Blades believes Chiriquí’s tourism industry could benefit from a new airport in David.1052170

Rubén Blades, director of the Instituto Panameño de Turismo (Ipat), thinks that building a new airport in David is one of the keys for developing tourism in the province of Chiriquí.

“We need to be able to accommodate flights arriving from Europe with more than 200 passengers, and that requires another airport,” he said.

Inés Esquivel, regional director of the Autoridad de Aeronáutica Civil (AAC), informed Blades that David’s Aeropuerto Enrique Malek currently receives international passengers flying on such aircraft as Boeing 737 (which accommodates up to 140 passengers) and Embraer (which carries 90 passengers).

There is also a plan to enlarge the docking platform to accommodate more than one large-scale aircraft for refueling or maintenance procedures.

Tourism in the area needs more than just an investment in a new airport, said Esquivel, who described an incident in 2007 in which a Boeing 737 arrived asking for 200 packaged meals. No restaurant in David is capable of serving that amount of food.

“The Canadian passengers left hungry because all we had to serve them was fuel," she said.