Encyclopedia > Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport
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Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport, located in Santiago, Chile, is Chile's largest aviation facility. It has the IATA Airport Code SCL.
The building is the hub for various Chilean airline companies such as Chile's largest national and international airline, Lan Chile, LanExpress, and the maligned Aerocontinente Chile which has been the subject of a drug trafficking investigation by Chilean police. It used to be a hub also for Ladeco, another major Chilean international airline, which was then acquired by Lan Chile.
No major airline accidents have happened there, but this didn't stop tragedy from knocking on the doors of this airport. In 1972, a plane chartered by an Argentinianrugby team from the Uruguay air force crashed in the Chilean side of the Andes while en route to this airport, leaving many people dead and many others to die days later. The survivors of the accident (who were travelling to Santiago to play a rugby match) and the stories of the things they experienced during those days when they were lost, became the subject of a 1992 Hollywood movie: Alive.
The airport's coastal location exposes it to fog, during which flights are occasionally diverted to Ontario InternationalAirport in San Bernardino County 47 miles (76 km) to the east.
Mines Field was dedicated and opened as the official airport of Los Angeles in 1930, and the city purchased it to be a municipal airfield in 1937.
On October 2, 1996, AeroPeru Flight 603, a Boeing 757 en route to LAX from ArturoMerinoBenitezInternationalAirport in Santiago, Chile, via Jorge Chavez InternationalAirport in Lima, Peru, crashed in the waters of the Pacific Ocean.
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