Deployment Sites
Suriname (Paramaribo / Zanderij)
Northeast South America: Paramaribo and Zanderij on the ARIA list—and the 1980 coup story of crews caught on the ground.
Suriname, on the northeast coast of South America, appears twice on the ARIA deployment list: Paramaribo, the capital, and Zanderij (Johan Adolf Pengel International Airport), the long-runway field inland from the city. Together they offered fuel and crew rest on routes between the Caribbean, Brazil, and West Africa.
Not every stop was quiet. Reunion remarks and Randy L. Losey’s “ARIA Held Hostage in Suriname” story recount February 1980, when three ARIA crews overnighting for fuel and rest woke to a military coup. The archive preserves that episode as lived experience—not as a claim about geopolitics beyond what the crews saw.
Zanderij and Paramaribo remain on the map as ordinary deployment names with an extraordinary footnote. Accuracy here means pointing to the first-hand story rather than embroidering it.
Milestones
- GeographyGuiana Shield coast — Jet airfield at Zanderij serving Paramaribo and transient long-range aircraft.
- 1980-02Coup overnight — ARIA crews on crew rest are caught on the ground during Suriname’s coup; story preserved on flyARIA.
- Deployment listTwo names — Paramaribo and Zanderij both appear on the worldwide site list.
On flyARIA
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Summary original to flyARIA.com. Photograph: NASA. Works of the U.S. Government are generally in the public domain in the United States; credit does not imply endorsement. Map coordinates are approximate.