Dakar Airport

Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport Aéroport international Léopold-Sédar-Senghor
IATA: DKR ICAO: GOOY
Summary
Airport type	Public / Military
Serves	Dakar
Location	Yoff, Senegal
Elevation AMSL	85 ft / 26 m
Coordinates	14°44′22″N 017°29′24″W / 14.73944°N 17.49000°W / 14.73944; -17.49000Coordinates: 14°44′22″N 017°29′24″W / 14.73944°N 17.49000°W / 14.73944; -17.49000
Website	aeroportdakar.com
Map
DKR Location of airport in Senegal
Runways
Direction Length Surface m ft 18/36 3,490 11,450 Asphalt 03/21 1,500 4,921 Asphalt
Statistics (2013)
Passengers 2,200,000
Source: Airport website,DAFIF

Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport (French: Aéroport international Léopold-Sédar-Senghor,IATA: DKR, ICAO: GOOY) is an international airport serving Dakar, the capital of Senegal. The airport is situated near the town of Yoff, north of Dakar. It was known as Dakar Yoff International Airport (French: Aéroport international de Dakar-Yoff) until 9 October 1996, when it was renamed in honor of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal.

The airport can handle wide body jets, including the Airbus A340-600 from South African Airways, and the Boeing 777-200 from Air France. In 2015, the airport served about 1,986,000 passengers.

Construction of a replacement airport 45 km inland from Léopold Sédar Senghor began in 2007. Saudi Binladin Group is constructing the new airport, named after the first black African elected to France's parliament in 1914, Blaise Diagne. It was initially expected to take 30 months to build and is designed for an initial capacity of 3 million passengers a year – almost double the 1.7 million annual traffic handled by the existing airport. The opening date has been delayed several times; the current projection was for December 2014, but the date of completion is unknown.

During World War II, Dakar Airport was a key link in the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command Natal-Dakar air route, which provided a transoceanic link between Brazil and French West Africa after 1942. Massive amounts of cargo were stored at Dakar, which were then transported along the North African Cairo-Dakar transport route for cargo, transiting aircraft and personnel. From Dakar, flights were made to Dakhla Airport, near Villa Cisneros in what was then Spanish Sahara, or to Atar Airport, depending on the load on the air route. In addition to being the western terminus of the North African route, Dakar was the northern terminus for the South African route, which transported personnel to Pretoria, South Africa, with numerous stopovers at Robertsfield (now Roberts International Airport), Liberia, the Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia.