Qualla: Malakal Airport

Malakal Airport: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On March 31, 2024, a Safe Air Boeing 727 freighter tried to land at Malakal and collided with the fuselage of an MD-82 that had been sitting short of the same runway for nearly two months. The MD-82 had crash-landed on February 9 when its main gear collapsed. Nobody had moved it, because there is nowhere to move it to and not much equipment for moving it. Both aircraft were photographed together the next day, one on top of the other like a brutal geometric sculpture. That image, more than any statistic, captures the working reality of Malakal International Airport: a single 2,000-meter asphalt runway in Upper Nile State of South Sudan, the country's second international airport, and a lifeline for a region that has spent most of the last forty years in emergency.

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Malakal Airport: A Runway on the Edge

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Malakal Airport sits at 1,291 feet above sea level on the west side of the White Nile, just north of Malakal's central business district and next to the main campus of Upper Nile University. Runway 05/23 is 2,000 meters long, paved, and long enough for regional jets and most UN a...

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Malakal Airport: The City Around It

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The airport has been damaged, repaired, overrun, and rebuilt in step with the city it serves. Between 2013 and 2015, during the worst of the Second South Sudanese Civil War, Malakal changed hands twelve times between government SPLA forces and opposition-aligned fighters. The BBC...

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Malakal Airport: The Accidents

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Aviation safety here has always been fragile. On November 10, 2015, a Hawker Siddeley Andover (registration TL-AEW) of the Central African Republic impacted a field and burned shortly after takeoff. All four crew members survived, but the aircraft was consumed by fire. In 2024 th...

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Malakal Airport: What the Airport Carries

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For the people of Malakal, the airport is not primarily a convenience. It is a medical evacuation vector when the hospital cannot cope. It is a way for family members to reach Juba, Nairobi, Khartoum. It is how food arrives when the White Nile barges are interdicted and the roads...

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