AIRPORT REVIEW The New MLE
4 open 19-acre ( 7.7 hectare ) building is the cherry on the cake of a huge makeover . “ A conversation about how to cope with an ever-growing demand started as far back as 2004 ,” Ibrahim Shareef Mohamed , CEO and Managing Director at the government-owned and controlled Maldivian Airports Company ( MACL ), told Airways in his Malé office .
It took more than 20 years for that ‘ conversation ’ to become a reality .
Tourism in the Maldives started in the mid-1970s . It grew steadily during the last two decades of the
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4 The view from the ‘ common use ’ lounge situated on the first floor in the seaplane terminal . Following the early morning rush , just a few of Trans Maldivian ’ s 62 DHC-6 Twin Otters are docked in waiting for passengers .
5 The main entrance of the existing main passenger terminal at MLE says it all about how confined and outdated the facility is . In 2023 , the terminal handled 4.3 million passengers . last century and literally boomed at the beginning of the new millennium as travelers from Russia , China , India , and the Gulf countries flocked to the paradise archipelago .
Huhlule Island was uninhabited in October 1960 , when the first and only airport in the country was completed with a 3,000ft ( 914m ) runway paved with steel sheets . The first commercial flight was operated by Air Ceylon almost two years later , on April 10 , 1962 . A major improvement to the facilities came in 1964 , when asphalt replaced the steel sheets . A new 9,317ft ( 2,840m ) runway was inaugurated in April 1966 by then-Maldivian president Ibrahim Nasir , to whom the airport was dedicated from 2011 to 2017 ( the present name , ‘ Velana ’, refers to his family name ).
But it was only at the end of the 1970s , with the start of mass tourism , that MLE started to assume its current aspect : the runway was once again extended to its present 11,150ft ( 3,400m ) length and a proper terminal was built to its west . That building has been enlarged and refurbished many times during the last four decades , resulting in an inefficient and disorienting layout across its limited floor surface of just 274,300sq ft ( 25,500m 2 ).
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