King Phalo Airport
King Phalo Airport Koning Phalo Lughawe | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summary | |||||||||||||||
| Airport type | Public | ||||||||||||||
| Operator | Airports Company South Africa | ||||||||||||||
| Serves | East London, South Africa | ||||||||||||||
| Opened | 1944 | ||||||||||||||
| Elevation AMSL | 436 ft / 133 m | ||||||||||||||
| Coordinates | 33°02′06″S 027°49′17″E / 33.03500°S 27.82139°E | ||||||||||||||
| Website | www | ||||||||||||||
| Map | |||||||||||||||
Location of airport in Eastern Cape province Location of Eastern Cape in South Africa | |||||||||||||||
| Runways | |||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
| Statistics (Jan-Dec 2019) | |||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||
King Phalo Airport (IATA: ELS, ICAO: FAEL) (Afrikaans: Koning Phalo Lughawe; formerly East London Airport (Afrikaans: Oos-Londen Lughawe) until 23 February 2021) is an airport serving East London, a city in the Eastern Cape province on the southeast coast of South Africa.
The airport handles between 20 and 30 flights daily, which bring 946,000 people to East London each year. Of these, about 540,000 are holidaymakers, mostly local, and about 15% are foreign tourists. In 2013, the airport served 658,363 passengers. In 2016, King Phalo Airport was voted the fastest growing airport in South Africa, having accomplished an almost 19% increase in traffic over a 12-month-period. The airport welcomed over 806,000 passengers in 2016, beating the 679,000 that passed through East London in 2015. The second best performing airport for growth in 2014 was Kimberley, with its traffic growing by 11%. Overall the top airports of South Africa witnessed nearly 39.7 million passengers in 2016, up 5.3% on the year before.