Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport
Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport | |||||||||||
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| Summary | |||||||||||
| Airport type | Public | ||||||||||
| Owner | Government of the Republic of Zambia | ||||||||||
| Serves | Ndola and Kitwe | ||||||||||
| Location | Ndola, Zambia | ||||||||||
| Opened | 7 October 2021 | ||||||||||
| Time zone | (UTC+2) | ||||||||||
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Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport (IATA: NLA, ICAO: FLSK) is an international airport in Ndola, Copperbelt Province, Zambia. It was called Ndola Airport before being renamed in 2011 for Simon Kapwepwe, the nation's former vice president. It is adjacent to the Dag Hammarskjöld Crash Site Memorial about fifteen kilometres (9.3 mi) west of the city centre.
The original Ndola Airport in Itawa (opened in the 1950s) was built to serve the city of Ndola, the administrative capital of the Copperbelt Province. Since the relocated Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport opened in 2021 it serves the cities of Kitwe and Ndola in the Copperbelt.
In late 2021 the Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport moved its operations to its present location adjacent to the Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial from its previous location in Ndola's Itawa suburb. This new airport was engineered by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC International) at a cost of $397 million. It was expected to be completed in Mid-2020 but was delayed by setbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is why it opened the following year.