Caibarién Airport

Economic reasons and strategic consolidation. The airport became obsolete with the construction of the Cayo Santa María causeway (completed in 1999) and the opening of modern airports designed to handle international tourist traffic to the nearby keys. Specifically, the much larger Abel Santamaría International Airport (MUSC/SNU) in Santa Clara was upgraded to handle large jets, and the Cayo Las Brujas Airport (MUBR) was built directly on the keys in 2001. The small, basic Caibarién airfield was inadequate for the scale of the new tourism industry and was therefore decommissioned.

The airport is completely abandoned and has been partially reclaimed by nature and for agricultural use. Satellite imagery shows the faint outline of the single runway, but it is overgrown and bisected by dirt tracks and roads. The land is now primarily used for farming and grazing. There are no visible remnants of airport buildings like terminals or hangars. The site is effectively a ghost airfield.

Caibarién Airport was a small, local airfield serving the municipality of Caibarién and the surrounding agricultural region. Its operations were primarily focused on:
- **General Aviation:** Handling small private aircraft.
- **Agricultural Aviation:** Used extensively for crop dusting (fumigación) over the vast sugarcane fields in the area, a common function for such airfields in Cuba.
- **Air Taxi and Domestic Flights:** Provided limited passenger and cargo connections to other Cuban cities with small aircraft.
It was never an international airport and could not accommodate large passenger or cargo planes. Its significance was purely regional before being rendered redundant by modern infrastructure.

Effectively zero. There are no known plans or prospects for reopening the airport. The region is well-served by the major international airport in Santa Clara (MUSC/SNU) and the domestic/regional airport at Cayo Las Brujas (MUBR). There is no economic or logistical justification to rebuild and reopen this small, deteriorated airfield.