Marabá Airport - João Correa da Rocha
Marabá Airport - João Correa da Rocha (MAB)
The main gateway to the South and Southeast of Pará, Marabá Airport plays an important integration role, connecting the region to the Brazilian capitals and the state's main cities. On the banks of the Transamazônica highway, Marabá has a developing economy. The city, the only one in the area that has air, road and rail transport, functions as a commercial and logistical center for more than 30 neighboring municipalities, serving a population of more than one million inhabitants.
As of November 21, 2023, João Correa da Rocha – Marabá Airport (MAB) began to be managed by Aena Brasil, after the concessionaire purchased a block of 11 Brazilian airport terminals at auction by the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac), carried out in 2022. As it already manages, since 2020, six units in the Northeast, Aena Brasil runs, in total, 17 airports in the country. The company is part of the Spanish company Aena, considered the largest airport operator in the world in terms of number of passengers.
Marabá Airport arose from the need to meet the demands of the population of Maraba and the region. Like many other airports in the country, first, an airfield was created, which then became an aerodrome, until it became an airport.
The first runway, located in the same location as the current one, 400 meters long, was inaugurated on November 17, 1935. In the 1966/67 biennium, it was expanded to 2 thousand square meters and asphalted by the Amazon Region Airports Commission (Comara).
The current Marabá airport was only opened on May 20, 1978. But it was only in 2010, more than ten years later, that the terminal was named after João Corrêa da Rocha, in honor of a great businessman and journalist, founder of the newspaper Notícias de Marabá, which dedicated itself to noble community causes and the growth and development of the region.
In the pages of the airport's history, the flight that took place on October 1, 1979, was special. For the first time, a Boeing 737-200 from the airline Varig/Cruzeiro landed at the unit. Soon after, Infraero began managing the airport, more precisely in 1980, the first year of the decade that saw the peak of gold exploration in Serra Pelada. At the time, there was a Marabá-Serra Pelada air bridge operated by Votec with regular flights by the E-110 Bandeirantes plane, in addition to numerous daily flights by air taxi companies.
Entering the 2000s, Marabá Airport gained, in 2001, the Marabá Telecommunications Unit, UT-Marabá, of the Amazon Surveillance System-SIVAM, with an area of more than 48 thousand square meters, located to the southeast from threshold 25 of the runway.
More work and renovations took place in the following decade. In 2019, expansion work allowed for a 40% increase in the area of the passenger terminal, which now measures 1,756.60 square meters. Passenger capacity was also increased by 25%. Previously, the airport could receive 1.2 million travelers annually. After completion of the works, there will be capacity for 1.5 million passengers.
During the next 30 years, the concession period, Aena Brasil will modernize Marabá Airport, preparing the unit for the demands of the present and future, guaranteeing its users increasingly comfort and safety.