The U.S. military has begun using three more airports to ferry aid and relief supplies to Haiti in an effort to relieve supply bottlenecks, a senior U.S. military commander said Thursday. In addition to the Caribbean country's main port of entry, Port-au-Prince airport, U.S. forces are now using an airstrip in the coastal city of Jacmel. They also were operating in the neighboring Dominican Republic at San Isidro Air Base and at Maria Montez International Airport in Barahona, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) chief General Douglas Fraser said. “Those are growing in their capacities… as we look to improve the airflow at all the airports that are in Haiti and the surrounding area,” Fraser told Pentagon reporters via videolink from SOUTHCOM headquarters in Miami, Florida. With a destroyed control tower and only one 2,900-meter runway, the Port-au-Prince airport has been choked with aid flights. Fraser said between 120 and 140 flights were arriving daily to the airport, up from an initial 30 or 40 daily flights, for a total of over 840 flights since the January 12 earthquake. But he acknowledged the huge magnitude of the mission to facilitate the delivery of desperately needed aid. “Because of the size and the magnitude of the assistance required, we have a waiting list of over 1,400 flights waiting to get into that small airport,” Fraser said.
