Originally Posted by
TriStar_drvr
That’s interesting. Had the chance to visit Quito in January. While walking about in a large park in the city center, my friend and I came upon a DC-4 on display. He wondered how it was brought there, and I surmised that it had flown in, as the park was very long and flat. I had no idea that it had served as the airport. Yes, I can imagine operating into there was a bit sporty. Thanks, you learn something new every day.
That's actually a DC-6 (mostly!) in Carolina Park - the old airport is actually a couple miles due north - I'm not sure how they got it there.
I taxiied past the Iberia 340 in the wee hours yesterday morning and it appeared to have all-new wheels/tires and, as far as I can tell, all 4 engine cowlings were attached and the undersides appeared to be undamaged. There was a fair amount of equipment parked around the center section, but no activity. Our contract mechanic told us that several Airbus personnel had flown in during the week to inspect the plane.
I fly into Quito almost weekly and can say that the low-level windshear the last 3 weeks is the worst I've seen since they opened the new airport ( and I typically do it in the middle-of-the night when it's calmed down significantly - light and variable winds throughout the whole 30-mile approach until 2,000' AGL and then a sudden 35kt tailwind until 1,400'AGL changing to a 5kt headwind at 1,000' AGL).