Comodoro Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport
Facts on SCL
Santiago's airport wasn't originally named for a person: it opened on February 9, 1967 as 'Aeropuerto Internacional de Pudahuel,' simply named for the municipality it sits in, and wasn't renamed Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport — after the founder of the Chilean Air Force — until March 19, 1980.
Source: Wikipedia — Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport
The airport is named for Arturo Merino Benítez, a Chilean military aviator who founded both the Chilean Air Force, in 1930, and the national airline LAN Chile, in 1929; he is remembered in Chile as the 'Father of Chilean Aeronautics' for building the country's aviation institutions from scratch.
Source: Wikipedia
Merino Benítez died in 1970 and never saw the honor: Santiago's airport, which had opened in 1967 under the plain name Pudahuel, wasn't rechristened in his memory until March 19, 1980 — a full decade after his death.
Source: Wikipedia
SCL serves as Latin America's main gateway to Oceania, with scheduled flights reaching Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, and Easter Island — destinations most other South American hubs don't offer.
Source: Wikipedia — Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport
In 2024, SCL handled over 26 million passengers, making it the fourth-busiest airport in South America.
Source: Wikipedia — Arturo Merino Benítez International Airport
A 1994 expansion gave the airport a new 90,000-square-meter international terminal modeled on the architecture of Marseille Provence Airport in France, built between the two parallel runways with its own control tower and duty-free zone.
Source: Wikipedia
The February 2010 Chile earthquake damaged the terminal and collapsed a pedestrian bridge, but both runways and the control tower survived, letting the Chilean Air Force fly a humanitarian air bridge to earthquake-stricken Concepción within days.
Source: Wikipedia
Terminal 2, opened in stages between 2018 and 2022, splits into four piers each themed to a Chilean region: green for Easter Island, warm tones for the Atacama desert, blue for the Lake District, and cold hues for Patagonia.
Source: Wikipedia
The airport doubles as a military base: it hosts the headquarters of the Chilean Air Force's 2nd Air Brigade and 10th Aviation Group, and its grounds stage FIDAE, Latin America's largest air and space trade show.
Source: Wikipedia