Chachoan Airport

Airport

ATF

Location of the airport in Ecuador

Runways

Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	m	ft	Surface
01/19	1,920	6,299	Asphalt

Source: WAD^[1] GCM^[2] Google Maps^[3]

Chachoan Airport (Spanish: Aeropuerto Chachoan) (IATA: ATF, ICAO: SEAM) is a high elevation airport serving Ambato (also known as San Juan de Ambato), capital of the Tungurahua Province in Ecuador. The airport is 6 kilometres (3.7 mi) northeast of Ambato, in a broad basin of the central Andes mountains cut through by the Ambato River.

The Ambato VOR-DME (Ident: AMV) is located on a ridge 4.7 nautical miles (8.7 km) south-southeast of the airport. The Ambato non-directional beacon (Ident: AMB) is located on the field. There is rising and mountainous terrain in all quadrants.^[4]^[5]

Accident

On October 28, 1997, An Aerogal Fairchild FH-227D, with registration HC-BUF, was operating a repositioning ferry flight with staff and equipment from Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport to Chachoan. Due to the pilots' and the airline's poor-to-none flight preparation to fly into this high-elevation airfield, the plane touched down halfway down the runway at high speed (at 100 knots). It overran the runway by 170 meters and fell into a 90-meter-deep ravine. There were no casualties among the seven occupants but the plane was written off.^[6]

This particular airframe (cn.573 formerly N2784R) had been briefly used in 1992 for photoshoot purposes for the 1993 Alive, painted in the livery of the ill-fated Uruguayan Air Force 571.^[7]^[8]