Qualla: Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Vberger, Public domain. On 4 April 2021, an Ethiopian Airlines cargo flight out of Addis Ababa touched down at an airport that had not yet opened. The Boeing 737-800, registration ET-AYL, had filed for Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International in Ndola's Itawa suburb. Instead, it found the then-unopened Copperbelt International Airport fifteen kilometers west of the city, where runway markings indicating closure were, according to later reporting, indistinct. Two and a half hours later, a second Ethiopian Airlines 737 - ET-AQP - approached the same unopened runway. This one realized the mistake at fifty feet above the ground, went around, and landed at the correct airport. Zambia's Transport Ministry opened an investigation. Four months later, the new airport opened officially under a new name, inheriting the old airport's IATA code. Today, Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International is Zambia's newest major gateway, built at a cost of $397 million, and it sits a few hundred meters from the site where Dag Hammarskjold's DC-6 went down in 1961.

Image: User:Vberger | Public domain

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport: The Man on the Sign

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean MENDIS, CC BY-SA 4.0. Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe was one of the founding figures of independent Zambia - a close associate of Kenneth Kaunda in the independence movement, and from 1967 to 1970 the nation's vice president. He later broke with Kaunda, founded his own political party, and spent years in polit...

Image: Sean MENDIS | CC BY-SA 4.0

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport: From Itawa to the West

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean MENDIS, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Itawa airport had served Ndola since the 1950s, when a military airfield southeast of the city was converted to civilian use. By the 2010s it was inadequate for the commercial traffic the Copperbelt needed - a region of copper, cobalt, and cement industries with regular fligh...

Image: Sean MENDIS | CC BY-SA 4.0

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport: A Memorial at the End of the Runway

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean MENDIS, CC BY-SA 4.0. The proximity to the Dag Hammarskjold Crash Site Memorial is not coincidental. Hammarskjold's DC-6, inbound to the old Ndola Airport in Itawa on the night of 18 September 1961, came down in forest west of the city. He and fifteen others aboard died. The official Rhodesian inquiry...

Image: Sean MENDIS | CC BY-SA 4.0

Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport: What the New Airport Means

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean MENDIS, CC BY-SA 4.0. With a modern terminal, a longer runway, and capacity to handle the wide-body aircraft that the old Itawa field could not, Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International changed Ndola's connectivity. Scheduled passenger service now includes Ethiopian Airlines to Addis Ababa, Kenya Airways t...

Image: Sean MENDIS | CC BY-SA 4.0