Ouagadougou Thomas Sankara International Airport OUA / DFFD

Handles roughly 98% of Burkina Faso's scheduled commercial air traffic and hosts Air Burkina's hub. Pax figure of ~600,000 for 2024 is an estimate (per brief); no newer primary SAFA/ANAC traffic report was located - a third-party aggregator separately lists ~0.85M annual pax, which appears to recycle the airport's old circa-2011 growth projection ('850,000 by 2025') rather than a current reported total, so it was not used here (Wikipedia's own historical figures show 404,726 pax in 2011 and 245,280 in 2020, consistent with this read). Name/renaming: sources checked (including English and French Wikipedia) disagree on or omit the exact date the field became 'Thomas Sankara International Airport' (one gives 2017; general awareness points to a Dec 2021 renaming under the transitional government) and neither could be pinned to a primary decree - but no post-2023 renaming AWAY from Sankara was found; it is still 'Thomas Sankara International Airport' in sources current to Sep 2025-Aug 2026 (the SAFA DG installation coverage, Wikipedia's most recent revision), and the Traore government in power since Sep 2022 actively promotes Sankara's legacy (e.g. renaming Boulevard Charles de Gaulle after him in Oct 2023), making a reversal unlikely. Operator: SAFA (created 18 Jun 2025, confirmed via Burkina Faso's official Council of Ministers minutes of that date; DG installed 10 Oct 2025 per prior research, not reconfirmed here) is Burkina Faso's newly unified national airports company, replacing the prior DAAN/MOAD/RACGAE split; treat any pre-mid-2025 source naming DAAN or ANAC as the operator as superseded. Replacement airport: Ouagadougou-Donsin (35 km NE, ~3,500 m runway reported complete by contractor Sogea-Satom in spring 2024) was targeted to open in 2025 but had NOT opened as of the most recent source checked (Wikipedia and French Wikipedia both still describe it as under construction/delayed) - DFFD remains the operating international gateway; verify Donsin's status before assuming any traffic shift. A second, shorter unpaved runway (04R/22L, ~1,911 m) is confirmed listed as closed in OurAirports and is not included above. Security: Burkina Faso has faced a Sahel jihadist insurgency (JNIM/ISGS-linked groups) since 2015-16, intensifying from 2019, with large rural areas of the country affected; two coups occurred in 2022 (Jan: Damiba ousts Kabore; Sep: Traore ousts Damiba), and most Western foreign-ministry travel advisories (e.g. UK FCDO) advise against all travel to Burkina Faso EXCEPT the capital Ouagadougou, which remains comparatively secure and is where this airport operates - confirm current advisory status before flight planning. ILS presence at DFFD could not be independently confirmed (recorded as null pending AIP Burkina Faso/ASECNA verification; neither OurAirports nor Wikipedia list one); Jet A-1 availability is inferred with high confidence from the mix of widebody/long-haul international carriers serving the field but was not independently confirmed against a fuel-supplier source. Coordinates, elevation, and runway dimensions above were independently cross-checked against OurAirports and match exactly.