Who will benefit from Bukele's Airport of the Pacific?

In 2019, when he was campaigning for the presidency, Nayib Bukele unveiled plans for a modern international airport in the department of La Union at the eastern edges of El Salvador.  He called it the "Airport of the Pacific," and claimed it would become an international airline bub. 

Three years later, in 2022, the government said that Nayib Bukele would lay the first stone for the new airport that year.  Nothing happened that year.

After three more years have passed, there has finally been a ceremony to lay the first stone.  On February 26, the government broadcast Bukele's speech as he celebrated the beginning of construction of the airport and extolled the benefits it would bring:

According to Bukele, the airport's first phase is going to have a 2.4 kilometers long runway with two boarding gates and a futuristic looking terminal.  Investment in the first phase of the project alone is pegged at $386.4 million, with funding from the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean (CAF), the Government of Spain, and the Salvadoran government.  

The image of phase one shows a small passenger terminal with two walk-out boarding gates.  The terminal is under a futuristic looking silver dome, but is a far cry from the images Bukele had been showing the country during his election campaigns.  


Bukele said this first phase of the Airport of the Pacific would open in the second half of 2027, and he made big claims that those two gates would serve a projected 300,000 passengers and 2,000 flights per year.  

Bukele's projections for future phases two and three were even more grandiose.  In the second phase, the runway would be extended and eight additional boarding gates built.  Bukele projected the airport would then serve 8,000 flights per year and one million passengers annually. The third phase would grow to five million passengers and 40,000 flights per year from a total of 18 boarding gates.    

But that's far in excess of the results of the feasibility study his office announced in July 2022. It provided for six departure gates with 1700 flights, serving 80,000 passengers annually. 

Like all public speeches by Bukele announcing future plans and projections, do not assume this project will be complete on time or will produce the advertised wondrous results.  Other than Avianca, which has its hub at the existing international airport, there is no word on what other airlines are planning to fly into this airport. Nor did Bukele share where financing would come for the second and third phases of the project or a timeline for those phases.   Bukele's other much-hyped project in the same location, Bitcoin City, has never left the drawing board.

To put things in context, the current international airport served a record 5.2 million in 2024 passengers which includes arrivals, departures, and persons who were simply connecting through the airport.  Yet Bukele talks about bringing in a similar five million passengers per year to the Airport of the Pacific, in a region where there are currently only a few small hotels, few restaurants, and no improved highway access.  Put simply, where is the passenger demand to fly into La Union going to come from?     

 Map of location for the airport:


While the future benefits of Bukele's airport are speculative, there are real adverse impacts created by locating the site in existing rural communities, imperiling water sources which feed ecologically important mangrove swamps, while cutting down almost 26,000 trees.

Here is a Google satellite image of the airport location before earth-moving equipment started activity:

Here is a Salvadoran government view from February 2025 of preparation for the 2.4 kilometer runway and airport facilities:


Several news reports have pointed out the losses being suffered by the existing small farmers and fishermen when the government came in to buy their land for the airport.  The Guardian titled its story  ‘They turned our home into a cemetery’: the high price of El Salvador’s Bitcoin City dream:

But many residents say they are being shut out of the opportunities that corporate tourism giants will seize. “They tell us this will bring prosperity, but we can’t invest. And the little money they’re offering us to leave barely buys a house, let alone land to farm,” says Adan Sosa, an agricultural worker who says he was offered $75,000 (£58,000) for his home and a separate plot where he grows crops.

The rising cost of land near the airport has made it almost impossible for small businesses and local vendors to establish themselves in the new economy, leaving many to ponder who will genuinely benefit.

Land prices in the area have soared by up to 3,200% since 2000, making ownership unattainable for most residents.
University radio YSUCA quoted one local resident:
He said he was “disappointed” because, in his words, he supported the president’s project in the hope of obtaining good benefits: “I worked for him to become president because he promised us good benefits, and now he’s kicking us out of my home and giving us lands that aren’t fertile to work on,” he said.

Journalist Nelson Rauda published an investigation in El Faro titled The Promise of Bitcoin City Displaces Conchagua regarding the acquisition by the government and private investors of land for the airport and surrounding projects:  

But longtime residents of Condadillo couldn’t share in the land speculation, even if they wanted to sell. Their only choice was to sell to the government, at a set price.  

On Oct. 4 and 5, 2022, CEPA employees called the residents of Condadillo one by one to a meeting in La Unión, the eponymous department capital that’s 13 miles away. There, they were asked to sign promises to sell their lands to the government of El Salvador; the government offered $8,000 for 75,000 square feet of land. Claros and many of his neighbors resigned themselves to selling their homes at that price.

But when they spoke to neighboring landowners about relocating, they discovered that similar-sized parcels, with land to grow their crops and easy access to the ocean, would cost upward of $40,000.

Will Claros explains that many residents signed sales promises for a below-market price out of self-preservation. “We signed it because they told us we could either do it or deal with the Attorney General’s Office,” he said. “I don’t want any trouble."

El Faro recently shared a photo essay titled Bukele’s Airport Project Brings Deforestation and Displacement with interviews of local resident impacted by the commencement of work on the airport.  

This video from the environmental news site MalaYerba titled The Dark Side of the Airport of the Pacific summarizes the environmental and human costs associated with this project.

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