Haiti Airfields

Port-au-Prince is home to Haiti's only international airport. Despite poor facilities, the U.S. Department of Transportation examined improvements and declared the airport in fulfillment of international safety standards in 2000. Only two years before, the same body had condemned the airport as unsafe. The small airport at Jérémie serves the domestic travel needs of the southwestern portion of the country. In total, Haiti has four airports with paved runways and eight with unpaved runways. Because of poor facilities at airports, helicopter travel has become an important tool for international forces serving in Haiti.

In 2007, drug traffickers continued to use small aircraft to make offshore air drops of illegal drugs as well as land deliveries using clandestine airstrips. At least 29 such landing strips were identified in 2007. Suspect drug flights from Venezuela increased by 38 percent compared to 2006. Fast boats transporting cocaine from South America arrive at a number of locations on the southern coast of Haiti. The cocaine is then transported overland to Port-au-Prince where it is frequently concealed on cargo and coastal freighters destined for the United States and Europe. Marijuana is shipped via fast boats from Jamaica to waiting Haitian fishing vessels and cargo freighters to seaports along Haiti's southern claw. It is then shipped directly to the continental United States or transshipped through the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico.