Spriggs Payne Airport

James Spriggs Payne Airport is an airport located 5km from downtown Monrovia, the capital of the Republic of Liberia in West Africa. The airfield is located within the busy and thickly settled Sinkor section of the city, and is therefore convenient to the business and political districts of the capital. Whereas Roberts International Airport is the primary aviation facility for the city and indeed the entire country, Spriggs-Payne has the only other paved runway in Liberia and only other international commercial flights into and out of Liberia. The airport is named after James Spriggs Payne who was president of the Republic of Liberia in 1868–70 and again in 1876–78.History and scheduled servicesSpriggs-Payne was the primary location for domestic services within Liberia since the 1950s. Since early 1991, Spriggs-Payne has handled limited international flights. The airport served as a base for ECOMOG troops during the Liberian Civil War and suffered damage during that conflict, including a rocket attack by rebels in April 1996 which destroyed several aircraft.From 2008 until mid-2010, scheduled commercial services were operated by Cameroon-based Elysian Airlines. The carrier established a significant operation at Spriggs-Payne, with weekly services to Freetown, Sierra Leone; Conakry, Guinea, and Banjul, the Gambia with connections to onward destinations such as Lagos, Nigeria and Douala, Cameroon. Elysian also connected the airport to several domestic destinations, with a weekly round-trip to Harper, and occasional stops in Greenville.