Silvio Pettirossi International Airport
Facts on ASU
Paraguay's international airport was inaugurated on 11 June 1938, though the runway now in use dates only from the 1960s and was resurfaced again in 1985.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport is named for Silvio Pettirossi (1887–1916), a Paraguayan aviation pioneer who learned to fly in Buenos Aires under Argentine aviator Jorge Newbery, earned his pilot's license in France in 1912, and toured Europe, South America and the US performing aerobatics before founding the Aeroclub del Paraguay in 1914.
Source: Wikipedia
Pettirossi, the airport's namesake, died in 1916, 22 years before Asunción's airport opened, when a wing of his plane broke apart mid-inverted-loop over Buenos Aires Province. The airport, three football clubs, an air force brigade and a Luque street all carry his name today.
Source: Wikipedia
From 1980 to 1989, under military dictator Alfredo Stroessner, the airport was officially renamed President Stroessner International Airport before it reverted to honoring aviator Silvio Pettirossi.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport sits in Luque, a satellite municipality about 10 km from downtown Asunción, and — as the only significant airport for the area — indirectly serves the Argentine border city of Clorinda, Formosa, across the river.
Source: Wikipedia
Some of Pettirossi's facilities are shared with the Paraguayan Air Force's Ñu-Guazú Air Force Base, a common arrangement at Latin American airports built before dedicated civil aviation infrastructure existed.
Source: Wikipedia
In the early hours of 31 July 2007, five armed men stole US$1 million from a money-exchange counter on the airport's ground floor, a robbery investigators later discovered had been planned from inside Asunción's Tacumbú prison.
Source: Wikipedia
On 17 December 2015, Air Europa began flights between Asunción and Madrid, the first direct connection between Paraguay and Europe in 21 years, after earlier nonstop European service by Iberia and Lufthansa had ended in the 1990s.
Source: Wikipedia