Incoming Costa Rica Flights Must be Manned by Highly Qualified Pilots.

The Juan Santamaria Airport in Alajuela will finally install a new Approach Light System (ALS) and this long overdue project should be finished by February 2009, if everything goes according to plans. It is about time after years of landing in the dark! These lights, which are especially designed to help the pilots estimate and calculate the distance from the landing strip in the case of rain and fog, stopped working in 2004, a little detail I am certainly happy I was not aware of every time I landed at the main Costa Rica airport.

A German company, Siemens, has been contracted for this job, and they say that the installation, which is to start in November, should not take more than 16 weeks to finish. Far from being a luxury, the lights are compulsory for a category 1 airports such as Juan Santamaria, in order to meet the requirements of the OACI (Civil Organization of International Aviation).

Apparently the lights were not maintained on a regular basis, and when the lights started going out, due to burnt out light bulbs and electrical problems, nobody went to check them out, with the excuse that some of them were placed on private Costa Rica property! This excuse is now obsolete as the airport has paid $1.15 million to acquire farms and fincas that find themselves on the landing path.

The new lights will flicker to be more visible from as far as from 900 meters away, in the rain and fog. Siemens will also be responsible for the construction of the electricity station that will control the lights, as well the construction of the roads and paths that will provide access to them.

Why it took four years to come to finalize such an important matter is beyond comprehension. The airport has been in the process of being rebuilt and renovated for years now, and still it is never good enough, there is always something wrong or something else to improve. When tourism is the main source of income in this country, it is rather baffling to say the least!

The Daniel Oduber airport in Guanacaste was no sooner completed that it proved to be incapable to deal with the growing number of tourists arriving there, and is now going to have to be renovated again, to suit the coming needs. However, only one alliance of companies made a bid to take on the renovation contract, which will entail an investment of about $18 million over the next 20 years.

When is Costa Rica going to learn to plan ahead and put the money where it is needed? We hear of improvements but it is never enough, nothing is ever finished so that things finally can start functioning efficiently, and in turn, more money is wasted in the process of restarting jobs, when they should have been done properly in the first place. This old way of thinking is keeping this country behind; it is time Costa Rica stopped patching things up and learn how to do a job completely and call it a day when it is truly done. A look at the roads is a perfect example; they get fixed until they literally resemble some kind of patchwork, instead of being resurfaced properly once and for all. The same goes with the way many activities are performed, always giving the same poor and unsatisfactory results. Wake up Costa Rica!

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Filed under: Travel on August 25th, 2008