Santiago de Puringla Airport

Economic reasons and obsolescence. Like many small, rural airstrips in Central America, Santiago de Puringla Airport was likely closed due to a combination of factors: lack of funding for maintenance, declining use as ground transportation became more reliable and affordable, and the absence of any commercial or strategic imperative to keep it operational.

The site is an abandoned airstrip. Satellite imagery of the coordinates (14.3675, -87.911392) shows a clearly defined but unmaintained dirt and grass runway. There are no remaining airport facilities such as hangars, terminals, or runway markings. The land is being slowly reclaimed by surrounding agricultural fields and vegetation, and the former runway appears to be used as a local path or dirt road by residents.

The airport served as a small, local general aviation airstrip for the municipality of Santiago de Puringla, a remote agricultural community in the La Paz department. Its primary role was to connect the town to the rest of the country before the establishment of a comprehensive road network. Operations were limited to small, single-engine aircraft (e.g., Cessna, Piper) and would have included private transport for landowners, medical evacuation (medevac) flights, agricultural support such as crop dusting, and providing access for government officials or non-governmental organizations. It was never a commercial airport with scheduled flights.

There are no known plans or prospects for reopening the airport. The cost of rehabilitating the runway and establishing even minimal facilities would be significant, and there is no apparent economic demand to justify the investment. The community is now adequately served by ground transportation, making the reopening of a local airstrip highly improbable.