Welcome to Freetown International Airport in Lungi, Sierra Leone!
Version 1.1 (official axe update)
Chopped down some trees near the taxiway to make more space for the heavies.
Smashed down the cranes at Freetown harbour because they were payware models and added free ones for all to enjoy. As compensation for your inconvenience you get some extra containers with stuff. Hope, you like them. Check the new dependency below. (San Pedro Port facilities)
Version 1.0
Why I did this airport
I've always used Flight Simulator to explore the world which resulted in big scenery collections. One day I realized that there can't be many countries left on earth, that I haven't visited in the sim. In my urge to complete the whole world and given that I never fly to default airports, I realized that there are only few countries left, that have never been covered by an addon. With flightsim.to offering requests, these could be narrowed down to three countries, Tuvalu, Samoa and Sierra Leone. After some waiting I finally decided to do them myself. So here is the last of the three! Feels historic somehow!
The real airport
What comes to most peoples mind when talking about Sierra Leone might be the civil war from 1991 - 2002 or the Ebola crisis. Despite still being one of the poorest countries on earth, it currently sees a stable development. This is true also for the airport and in the 2010's the government planned a new airport in a different location.
The problem with Freetown airport: it lies in the town of Lungi and is separated from Freetown city by River Sierra Leone which is 16 km wide at its estuary. A car ride from the airport to the city takes 4-6 hours so most people go by ferry. I included a number of ferries in my scenery.
In 2018 the new government decided to cancel the new airport but to modify the existing one and bring it to modern international standards. To remedy the problem with the poor location, it was decided to build a large bridge called Lungi Bridge across Sierra Leona River which will be more expensive than the airport but will improve infrastructure in general. It was planned to start building it this year but according to latest informations there is a delay.
So the airport saw a big change in 2023. You can very well follow the development by checking it on Google Earth changing the timeline. The new terminal was opened in March 2023 and along with a smaller VIP-terminal was built north of the runway into what previously was dense forest. That's why the current satellite imagery in the sim doesn't match real life. I did my best to put textures and vegetation in to cover it up.
My scenery
The real airport is work in progress so I don't know how the place looks right now.
The old terminal and heliport lie south of the runway. It looks like they have been deteriorating in the past years but one taxiway is still open so it's obviously still in use.
Nothing in my scenery is handcrafted so don't expect too much.
What my scenery offers:
- Current ground layout
- Old and new terminals
- Construction site
- Lots of ships
- Animal life in the sea and on land (marked by fauna markers)
- Lots of clutter
Installation
Extract the file Freetown into your community folder.
Add the dependencies down below. Most assets are from Microsoft/Asobo so you won't miss much if you don't have all of them.
The UK 2000 library is needed which you get for free from the marketplace.
Enjoy!
Donations
This mod was created for the love of the hobby and to give something back to the great flightsim community, that has created so many cool free mods over the past years. No donations possible. :-)
Carlos17
Snoopy7412 author
7 months ago