TODAY COSTA RICA – The Pavas airport – Aeropuerto Internacional Tobías Bolaños (SYQ) is one of four international airports in Costa Rica, and the secondary airport serving the city of San José, after Juan Santamaría International Airport.
It is located in the Pavas District of the San José Canton.
The airport is named for the Costa Rican pilot Tobias Bolaños Palma (1892-1953), the first pilot who graduated and who laid the foundation of aviation in Costa Rica.
But before this airport could be built, experts such as Luis Guillermo Fernández, second vice president of the Civil Aviation Board had to convince then Costa Rica president, José Maira Figueres (father of the current José Maria Figueres Olsen who is running for a second term as president in the 2022 elections) that plan was a reasonable one.
The current Pavas airport opened in 1975 as International Airport.
Original text published by La Nación on September 3, 1971.
“Pavas is better than what the public expects. It gives the impression of an ideal plan aimed at regulating air services by means of an economic order that seems reasonable to me, ”said President José Figueres at the end of the inspection tour of the new airport.
As reported this morning in previous editions, the Pavas airport is not yet finished, except for the runway.
The access road, which cost around ¢1.2 million, will be paved over the next week: it is just over two kilometers long.
The engineers indicated that its design foresees a double service: it will also be an intercantonal route that will constitute a means of decongestion.
The total cost of the work is estimated at about ¢6 million. Only in the construction of hangars, the investment will be approximately ¢3 million.
Eng. Franz Ulloa, deputy director of Civil Aviation, affirmed that the farm has an area of just under 100 blocks (100 meters x 100 meters), and insisted that it would not be surrounded by the city.
