Coutada Airport

The primary reason for its closure was the outbreak of the Angolan Civil War. The name 'Coutada' is Portuguese for 'hunting reserve' or 'preserve', indicating the airstrip's purpose was to serve the big-game hunting safari industry. This industry, popular during the Portuguese colonial era, collapsed entirely when the war began, making the airstrip's function obsolete. The region became a major conflict zone, making any civilian aviation impossible for decades. Post-war, the site was left to decay due to a lack of economic activity, its remote location, and the extensive presence of landmines in the province.

The site is completely abandoned and unusable. Satellite imagery shows a clearly defined but heavily overgrown dirt runway in the middle of the remote Angolan bush. There are no visible buildings, hangars, or any supporting infrastructure remaining. The area is now part of the wider Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA), a multinational conservation initiative. The region is still undergoing significant de-mining efforts, making the area largely inaccessible and undeveloped.

Coutada Airport was a private, bush airstrip built to support high-end tourism, specifically for a 'Coutada Pública' (Public Game Reserve) in the wildlife-rich Cuando Cubango province. Its role was purely logistical, allowing small charter aircraft (like the Cessna 206 or Britten-Norman Islander) to fly international hunters and tourists from larger hubs to remote safari camps. It represents a lost era of Angolan tourism that existed prior to 1975. It held no known strategic military importance, unlike other airstrips in the region, and never handled scheduled commercial flights.

There are no known plans or prospects for reopening Coutada Airport. Any future aviation access to this specific area would likely be part of a new eco-tourism development under the KAZA initiative. This would almost certainly require the construction of a new, modern airstrip rather than the costly and difficult rehabilitation of the old, long-abandoned site. Given the extreme remoteness, lack of infrastructure, and ongoing post-conflict recovery challenges, the reopening of this specific airstrip is highly improbable.