Aeroporto de Bronco Sal

The Aeroporto de Bronco Sal is an airport located on an island about 300km (186 miles) off the Portuguese coast in the Atlantic ocean on about the same latitude as Porto. The island's main resource is salt, this is also where the name comes from. Nevertheless it still features one of Europe's best beaches and salt water lakes and is a famous tourist spot for holiday makers mainly from Germany.
==History==
In 1986 the local government announced its intention to build an airport on the island the accommodate the ever-rising number of tourists coming to the island, mainly with boats from Porto. Bronco Sal, which is about the same size as Madeira, features several spots suitable for an airport and in 1988 a place near the main city, Bras, was chosen. 
Construction of the terminal began in spring 1989 and the then only 1,500 meter long runway was build in summer of 1989. Construction of the terminal was finished in autumn 1990. It was equipped with three parking positions for airplanes the size of A320's / 737's. The airport was opened for the summer flight plan (SFP) of 1991, originally with Portugalia Airlines as only operator, with three daily flights to Lisbon and 2 to Porto. 
===Expansion and first international services===
As more and more hotels were build on the island, more and more tourists came to Bronco Sal which meant that the airport was too small to accommodate all passengers in 1998 and a plan to expand the airport was handed to the government. It featured a runway with a length of nearly 2,500 meter and an expanded terminal with now 5 stands for airplanes, capable for planes as big as a Boeing 757. The government accepted the plan in 1999 and soon after the construction began on the runway, adding 500 meters to each end of the runway because on one end there is one of Bronco Sal's beaches and on the other end there are some mountains in the distance which makes it unable for planes to intercept a straight glide path.
The expansion was completed in early 2000 and in the SFP of the same year, German airline Hapag-Lloyd scheduled daily flights to Bronco Sal from various German airport. This marked the beginning of the mainstream tourism in Bronco Sal.
Soon after Hapag-Lloyd, another German airline, Condor, started daily flights to Frankfurt, British airline Thomson scheduled flights from London Gatwick and Manchester to Bronco Sal and Russian airline Transaero from Moscow.
===Fire of 2012===
On the evening of the 15 November 2012 a fire broke out in a cable shaft in the terminal. The long undetected tire eventually spread over the whole dropped ceiling before some passengers noticed that it's getting hotter in the terminal and that smelly smoke came out of the air conditioning. The airport's fire brigade was called to investigate the situation and after they looked into the ceiling they realized that the whole terminal was lit up. 
The airport was evacuated on 19:21 UTC and additional firefighters were called in from Bras and other cities on the island. Inbound flights were diverted to Porto and Lisbon and airport workers managed move one plane away from the terminal, another plane, a chartered A320, was damaged when the fire reached gas bottles which then exploded and were thrown in all directions, hitting a fuel truck which was fueling up the Airbus for the return journey to Warsaw. Eventually the fuel truck leaked fuel which was lit on fire by sparks coming from the terminal. The fuel truck exploded still under the wing of the Airbus, resulting in the explosion of the airplane's fuel tank in the wings. The fire eventually was under control at 22:58 UTC, leaving the terminal completely destroyed, the Airbus burned down completely and one firefighter was killed fighting the balze in the terminal, 12 more sustained injuries, a total of 46 people needed medical attention.
The airport remained closed the whole next year, a completely new terminal was build in an effort to make the airport future proof. Flights resumed on the first day of the SFP of 2014.
Since then the airport has been without a major incident.
==Airlines and destinations==
===Passenger===
===Cargo===
There are currently no cargo operators at Bronco Sal.
==Accidents and Incidents==
Apart from the deadly fire in 2012 there has been only one incident so far at the airport:
On 17th September 2006 a Fokker 100 of Portugalia Airlines landed long with backwinds causing the airplane to overran the end of the runway by about 100 meters. Nobody was injured and the plane sustained no damage. It was removed from the grass later the night, not to interfere with the airports normal operations, and resumed flights on the following day after a nice wash.
Category:Airports in Europe