Air Transport

AIR TRANSPORT










Royal Air Cambodge


Air Transport Cambodia has ten airports, including Phnom Penh International Airport (Pochentong Airport) and Siem Reap Airport, the gateway to Angkor Wat, which serves international flights.

The Société Concessionnaire de l’Aéroport (SCA) is a special purpose company that holds a 25-year concession (from 1995) from the Government of Cambodia to manage and operate the Pochentong and Siem Reap Airports. Some parts of the operation of the two airports are delegated to Cambodia Airport Management Services Limited under an operating agreement with SCA. A major improvement program in 2003-07 is planned, funded in part by the International Finance Corporation:

• US$23.2 million to upgrade the facilities of Pochentong Airport (runway lengthening and widening, construction of a parallel taxiway, expansion of apron and warehouse facilities and modernization of the airport operating equipment)
  
  
  
• US$23.9 million for Siem Reap Airport (major repairs of the runway and taxiway, extension of the taxiway and aprons, construction of a new terminal building, modernization of the airport operational equipment and construction of a new cargo warehouse).

* War and continuing fighting severely damaged Cambodia's transportation system — a system that had been inadequately developed in peacetime. The country's weak infrastructure hindered emergency relief efforts and created tremendous problems of procurement of supplies in general and of distribution. Cambodia received Soviet technical assistance and equipment to support the maintenance of the transportation network.

The country possesses twenty-six airfields, of which only thirteen were usable in the mid-1980s. Eight airfields had permanent-surface runways. Pochentong International Airport near Phnom Penh is the largest airport; it also serves as the main base for the renascent Cambodian Air Force (see Kampuchean, or Khmer, People's Revolutionary Armed Forces, ch. 5). Cambodia opened a new Soviet-built airfield at Ream, Sihanoukville International Airport in late 1983, which never saw commercial air traffic until now. There are additional secondary airports in Siem Reap and in Battambang.

• Air Kampuchea was established in 1982 and flew only one route-- from Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. In 1984 commercial air service was inaugurated between Phnom Penh and Hanoi with the arrival at Hanoi International Airport of the Kampuchean Civil Aviation Company's (AKASCHOR) first flight. Since then, there has been regular air service from Phnom Penh to Hanoi, Vientiane, and Moscow.