Balimo Airport (AYBM)

Balimo Airport at a glance

Balimo Airport is a medium airport in Balimo, Western Province, Papua New Guinea, known to airline systems as OPU. The field elevation of 51 ft (16 m) is the number every arriving pilot dials against QNH — circuit heights and initial approach altitudes at AYBM are all figured from it. The airport handles scheduled commercial service, so expect controlled procedures, published approaches and commercial traffic in the pattern.

No runway records exist for this entry in the source dataset — common for fields whose operators never filed dimensions with the public dataset. The absence of a record says nothing about the runway on the ground: it may be paved, lighted and perfectly serviceable. Treat published charts, national AIP entries and the operator as the authoritative sources for runway data here, and this page as the identity and position reference for the field at Balimo. When the dataset gains a runway record for this field, the next site build picks it up automatically — the reference layer regenerates from source on every rebuild rather than being edited by hand.

For the weather side of planning, the live METAR and TAF page for AYBM shows the current observation decoded line by line — wind on an instrument dial, visibility, cloud layers and the resulting flight rules — refreshed continuously from official sources.

Flight-planning notes for Balimo Airport

Density altitude is the quiet performance-killer at any field: on a hot day the 51 ft field elevation of Balimo Airport can translate into a substantially higher density altitude, stretching take-off rolls and flattening climb rates — run the numbers rather than trusting the feel of a standard day. Expect published instrument procedures, controlled airspace and clearance requirements; slots and handling may apply to general aviation traffic.

This entry is one of 21 airports and airfields we list for Papua New Guinea — the country index on the airports hub links the rest. Coordinates above are given in both DMS and decimal degrees so they can go straight into a GPS, a flight planner or a chart plot without conversion.

Where this data comes from

The reference layer behind this page builds on the OurAirports dataset — a public-domain, community-maintained register of the world's airports that many flight planners and apps rely on — with equity records preserved from documented historical listings where the dataset is silent. Figures are carried as published: elevations as surveyed, coordinates as filed, runway dimensions as recorded. Nothing is estimated to fill a gap, and the whole layer regenerates from source on every site build, so corrections upstream arrive here automatically.