Djibouti-Ambouli Airport

Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport is the sole international airport of the Republic of Djibouti and serves as the country's principal civil gateway as well as one of the most strategically significant military airfields in Africa. Located roughly 4 mi (6 km) south of central Djibouti City at 49 ft (15 m) elevation on the Gulf of Tadjoura, the field shares its runway with Camp Lemonnier — the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa and headquarters of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa — as well as French, Japanese, Italian, and Chinese military detachments. This concentration of foreign installations makes Djibouti's airfield one of the densest multinational military hubs anywhere in the world, reflecting the country's position overlooking the Bab-el-Mandeb strait and the southern approaches to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. The airport handles 16 routes across 12 destinations through 12 airlines. Air Djibouti, the national flag carrier, operates regional services alongside Ethiopian Airlines (to Addis Ababa), Turkish Airlines (Istanbul), Qatar Airways (Doha), flydubai (Dubai), Kenya Airways (Nairobi), and Daallo Airlines (Mogadishu, Hargeisa). The route network concentrates on Middle Eastern and East African capitals plus the long-haul Istanbul link that feeds Djibouti into the Turkish Airlines global network. The diversity of airlines relative to the small destination count reflects Djibouti's outsized commercial importance as a container-shipping entrepôt and as transit point for landlocked Ethiopia. The single paving-block runway 09/27 measures 10,335 ft (3,150 m), long enough for all widebody operations. A replacement airport, Hassan Gouled Aptidon International (also referred to as Bicidley), has been under on-and-off construction south of the city to eventually take civil operations and free Ambouli for exclusive military use; Ambouli itself remains the active civil field. Average temperatures routinely exceed 95 deg F (35 deg C), and the airport experiences some of the highest surface temperatures of any major commercial airfield in the world.