US Airways flew into Liberia’s Daniel Oduber Airport last Saturday, becoming the fourth North American airline to run direct, scheduled, flights into Guanacaste.   The US Airways Airbus 319 with a near-capacity 115 passengers on board.  

The airline will initially run a single flight, every Saturday, from its main US hub in Charlotte, North Carolina. However there are already plans to add a second flight Sundays, probably beginning next month.   US Airways joins Delta, Continental and American Airlines, which are all running scheduled flights into Liberia.  “When we started our routes to San José 18 months ago we were always looking at Liberia,” said Eric Mathieu, US airways’ Executive Director in Latin America and the Caribbean.  “I guess it then took about 12 months of research, talking with both the US and the Costa Rican governments, analyzing statistics, price structures and things like that,” Mr. Mathieu said.

US airways had a team of 23 in Guanacaste leading up to the arrival of the inaugural flight.   Saturday is now the airport’s busiest day, with seven commercial passenger flights scheduled to arrive, some of them landing within 30 minutes of each other. In February the airport is expected to handle 38 direct flights a week.

Industry leaders now estimate as many as 270,000 passengers will use the airport this year —- nearly 80,000 more than in 2004.