The current international and domestic passenger airport in Angola's capital Luanda is Quatro de Fevereiro International Airport (Portuguese: Aeroporto Internacional 4 de Fevereiro - IATA: LAD). This has been around since the 1950s, and is very central, being around 3.5km south-east of Luanda's city center, making it difficult to expand.

There has been a new airport under construction 40km to the south-east of the capital since about 2006-7. In fact, it is so far to the south-east that it's technically not in Luanda Province, it's over the border in Bengo Province. Dr. Antonio Agostinho Neto International Airport (referred to as AIAAN, although this is not the official IATA code yet) was finally inaugurated on 10 November 2023, at a cost of over USD3.8 billion.

The first commercial cargo flight landed there on 19 December 2023. AIAAN is currently only taking cargo flights, but starting in March 2024 the plan is for domestic flights to move over there, and then by July 2024 they want all the international flights moved over from LAD. AIAAN will be able to handle 15 million travelers annually - 10 million international and 5 million domestic.

I look forward to landing there at some stage later this year, assuming they stay on-track with the switchover plans!

To see some more photos of this African mega-project, see here on Skyscraper City (where the three images below came from).