Manta Air Base
| Eloy Alfaro International Airport | |||||||||||
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| Summary | |||||||||||
| Airport type | Public / Military | ||||||||||
| Operator | Military of Ecuador | ||||||||||
| Location | Manta, Ecuador | ||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 48 ft / 15 m | ||||||||||
| Coordinates | 00°56′45″S 080°40′43″W / 0.94583°S 80.67861°W | ||||||||||
| Map | |||||||||||
 MEC
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Source: DAFIF
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Eloy Alfaro International Airport (IATA: MEC, ICAO: SEMT) is a combination civilian airport and military air base on the outskirts of Manta in the province of Manabí in western continental Ecuador. The airport, also known as Eloy Alfaro Air Base, is named in honor of Eloy Alfaro, a former president of Ecuador. It was inaugurated by the Ecuadorian Air Force on October 24, 1978. It is the fourth busiest airport in Ecuador.
The airport resides at an elevation of 48 feet (15 m) above mean sea level. It has one runway designated 05/23 with an asphalt surface measuring 9,383 by 148 feet (2,860 m × 45 m).
Until July 2009 a portion of the airport was used by the Air Forces Southern Air Force component of the United States Southern Command for operations against illegal cocaine trafficking in northwestern South America. It was formally known as Forward Operating Location Manta. In 1999, the U.S. signed a ten-year agreement with then Ecuadorean President Jamil Mahuad allowing the U.S. to station up 475 military personnel at Manta, rent-free. USAF AWACS E-3 and United States Navy P-3 Orion aircraft, supported by about 300 US military personnel, operated from the base to monitor air traffic in the area. The U.S. aircraft based at Manta fed surveillance information to the Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West. The aircraft at the base flew about 100 missions a month looking for drug-running boats departing Colombia. In 2007, the flights led to about 200 cocaine seizures, totaling about 230 tons. The flights accounted for about 60 percent of U.S. drug interdiction in the eastern Pacific.
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