Punta Cana International Airport
Facts on PUJ
Punta Cana International Airport, inaugurated in December 1983, was designed by architect Oscar Imbert with open-air terminals roofed in palm fronds — an architectural signature that still distinguishes its older buildings from a typical enclosed terminal.
Source: Wikipedia
"Punta Cana" is a deliberately chosen name, not an old one: Dominican entrepreneur Frank Rainieri, who in the late 1960s teamed up with New York attorney Theodore Kheel to acquire the undeveloped eastern coastline, renamed the site Punta Cana in 1970, replacing its earlier names of Yauya or Punta Borrachos ("Drunkards' Point").
Source: Wikipedia
Built and owned by Grupo Puntacana rather than the Dominican state, Punta Cana became the first privately owned international airport in the world when it opened, a model still unusual among major airports today.
Source: Wikipedia
Before a road linked Punta Cana to Higüey in the late 1970s, the region had no highways or harbors; visitors reached the area's early hotels only by flying into a bare airstrip and finishing the trip by dirt road.
Source: Wikipedia
Punta Cana's first international flight touched down in January 1984: a 20-seat Prinair turboprop from San Juan, Puerto Rico. The fledgling airport carried just 2,976 passengers in the whole of that first year.
Source: Wikipedia
A second runway opened in 2011, making Punta Cana the first Caribbean airport with two runways longer than 10,000 feet — long enough to start receiving Boeing 747-400s and Airbus A340s on long-haul routes from France, England and Brazil.
Source: Wikipedia
Terminal B, inaugurated in November 2014, was the airport's first to use jet bridges and the first built fully enclosed, breaking from the open-air, palm-thatched style of the original terminals.
Source: Wikipedia
More than 8.3 million passengers passed through Punta Cana in 2022, and by 2023 the airport accounted for 60% of all air arrivals into the Dominican Republic — second only to San Juan among Caribbean airports.
Source: Wikipedia
In February 2016 an Orenair Boeing 777 bound for Moscow turned back after an in-flight engine fire; its overweight landing overheated the gear, which caught fire on the runway, and the grounded jet sat at Punta Cana for ten months before departing.
Source: Wikipedia