Port Sudan New International Airport PZU / HSPN

Sudan's de facto primary international gateway since Khartoum International shut down at the start of the civil war in April 2023 (Khartoum was under RSF occupation 15 Apr 2023 - 25/26 Mar 2025). Confirmed current carriers as of Aug-Sep 2026: the Sudan Airports Company states five international airlines serve Port Sudan — EgyptAir, Ethiopian Airlines, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines and SalamAir (Oman) — alongside Sudanese carriers Badr Airlines, Tarco Aviation and Sudan Airways on domestic/regional routes. Two corrections to the draft carrier picture: (1) EgyptAir did not serve Port Sudan continuously — it suspended the Cairo route in May 2025 after the drone strikes below and only resumed on 5 Aug 2026 (five weekly flights), so it is a very recent re-entrant, not a constant. (2) Qatar Airways' Doha-Port Sudan service launched 2 Jul 2026 (confirmed by Centre for Aviation/Zawya/MSN reporting), matching the draft's 'July 2026' claim. RSF drone strikes hit the area in two attacks confirmed by contemporaneous reporting: Sun 4 May 2025 struck an ammunition warehouse at the nearby Osman Digna (Othman Daqna) military airbase, burning for two days; Tue 6 May 2025 struck the airport itself (fuel tanks), the port and a hotel, canceling inbound flights and disrupting operations for several days afterward — the draft's '4-9 May 2025' window is consistent with available reporting but the 9 May end date specifically could not be pinned to a source. IMPORTANT CORRECTION to the draft's Khartoum-reopening claim: Khartoum International did NOT reopen in stages between October 2025 and March 2026. Per Wikipedia's sourced timeline: the Sudanese Armed Forces recaptured the Khartoum airport site on 25/26 March 2025 (military recapture, not passenger reopening); domestic flights resumed 22 Oct 2025 (Badr Airlines, Khartoum-Port Sudan); international flights did not resume until 28 Apr 2026, with a Kuwait Airways flight as the first international arrival. So Port Sudan remained Sudan's ONLY functioning international gateway through April 2026, roughly a month later than the draft implied — Port Sudan is still the more consistently operational of the two as of September 2026, but the 'no longer the only gateway' transition point should be dated to April 2026, not March 2026. A further Sudan-airspace drone incident occurred in May 2026 (Sudanese army reported shooting down a drone crossing from Ethiopia near Ed Damazin/Blue Nile on 23 May 2026), but this was not specifically a Port Sudan/PZU incident — treat the draft's phrasing on this point as directionally correct (security remains fragile, check NOTAMs) rather than as a Port Sudan-specific event. Coordinates: this record's lat/lon (19.4346, 37.2341) match OurAirports' listing (19.434558, 37.234125) almost exactly, but differ from Wikipedia's DMS-derived value (19°26'01"N 037°14'03"E = 19.43361, 37.23417) by about 0.001 degrees (~100m) in latitude — both are plausible airport-reference-point values; elevation (141ft/43m) is corroborated by Wikipedia exactly (OurAirports shows a slightly different 135ft/41m — minor cross-source discrepancy, not resolved against a primary AIP source here). Runway designation/length/surface (16/34, 2502m/8209ft, asphalt) corroborated by both Wikipedia and OurAirports; runway width (45m) and the ILS frequency could not be independently corroborated. The pax figure (~400,000 for 2025) remains a wartime-conditions estimate rather than a published annual report; one vendor logistics source cites throughput nearer 450,000 against roughly 1,000,000 nominal capacity — treat both as approximate, as could not be verified against a primary SCAA/SAHCO statistics source.