About the Author
My name is Ian Pasternak, and I was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. I have been fascinated by Central Africa for a long time — a region that originally caught my attention for the same reason that led me to create this website: the significant lack of documentation on many aspects of its geography, history, and infrastructure.
I have always been naturally curious, and when I can’t find answers to things I’m looking for, I tend to start researching. My particular passion lies in old infrastructure. In Europe, I have spent a lot of time using historical maps to document abandoned railways, and I have visited many of their remains during my cycling tours. I also enjoy exploring old, abandoned buildings and metal detecting, trying to uncover things from the past.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), much of the infrastructure is poorly documented, and yet, paradoxically, there are official lists that suggest a certain degree of organization. For example, the country has a detailed multi-level network of national roads, and 286 airports with official ICAO codes.
However, a closer examination reveals a different reality. Many of the officially numbered roads are in extremely bad condition — some have even ceased to exist. A striking example is National Road 1 east of Kikwit, which was realigned in the mid-1980s. This new alignment was never updated in official documentation, meaning that the old sections (for example Kikwit - Idiofa), which are still in use, remain without any reference number to this day.
The same problem applies to airports — as described on the main page, the existence, condition, and location of several airstrips are highly questionable despite being officially listed.
About the Research
Researching old infrastructure in the DRC is challenging and often requires a combination of different methods. When investigating airports, I primarily rely on historical maps, particularly old aeronautical charts.
One invaluable source of information is the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, Belgium, which houses a vast collection of colonial-era maps. During the 2010s, the museum launched a major digitization project, scanning and georeferencing maps to make them accessible online. These maps can be accessed here. However, it appears that the project came to a halt soon after its launch, as the available collection has seemingly not expanded in the past five years. Many hundreds of maps remain listed in the catalog but are still unavailable for viewing, leaving vast regions of the Congo without coverage.
Another essential tool in my research is satellite imagery, which has been available since 1984, albeit at very low resolution. Despite this limitation, maintained dirt runways in forested areas can often be clearly distinguished. With more recent high-resolution imagery, I scan the surroundings of suspected old airstrips, looking for faint traces of former runway alignments.
Additionally, the ICAO publishes Doc 7910, which lists all airports worldwide along with their ICAO codes. However, this document contains only names and codes - without even providing coordinates. Fortunately, I was able to obtain airport lists for the DRC from both the United Nations (UN) and Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF). These lists are particularly interesting as they include many airports, even some without ICAO codes, and aggregate data from various sources. Most notably, they provide coordinates for each listed airport, and in some cases, details about the operator and runway headings. Both lists appear to originate from the same initial source, which the UN dataset refers to as “ancienne base”. In the lists, this “ancienne base” has since been partially updated - especially in the MAF list, which includes additional airports and corrections to the older data. But both lists also still contain a lot of data from the mysterious original dataset, which is often highly inaccurate: the provided coordinates are only precise to the nearest minute (e.g., S00 44.00, E018 08.00), meaning they can be several hundred meters off from the airport’s actual location - if the airport still exists at all! There are several other issues with this “ancienne base” data, which I will describe - if relevant to the case - in detail on the respective airport pages. One aspect that does seem to be fairly reliable, however, is the recorded runway heading - which can provide valuable clues when trying to locate former airport sites.
Of course, the best source of information would be local knowledge. However, my network of contacts in the Congo is limited, and establishing new connections solely for a hobby project like this is not easy.
Due to the difficult nature of this research, many of my findings involve theories and speculation — particularly when attempting to locate missing airports or explain anomalies in ICAO documentation. However, I am committed to ensuring that all unverified information is clearly marked on this website.
The collection of information and all conclusions made on this website are the courtesy of humans. However, in some instances, information is collected in or compiled to bullet points, which are transformed into flowing text with the help of AI. All respective text is read, checked and verified by humans. Furthermore, AI is used to help with the translation of English content to French.
About the conclusions
The content of this website is the result of the research presented above. To say it clear and concise: I am usually sitting behind my desk, browsing tons of old documents, websites and maps. I did so far (as of early 2025) not specifically visit any archives or built a network of local contacts in the DRC - I would love to do that, but it exceeds the times and effort I can spend on a project that is so far just a hobby. This also means - and this is important: If I write - for example: “The location of this airport remains a mystery” - this means that it remains a mystery for me and that I was unable to figure out where this airport was located, using the means that were available to me at that time. It does not mean that I claim the airport’s location to be a mystery worldwide and for everybody. I created this website because I realized that even with only online-research, I was able to find quite some details about those airfields that were not available in this form anywhere else.
Contact
I would love to collaborate! If you have any information about an airfield in the DRC, or if you share an interest in documenting abandoned infrastructure, feel free to get in touch.
ian [at] pasternak [dot] info