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A welcoming party after Fred and Phil landed at the airport.
thousand people, where Borrelli developed an oceanside inn, Scorpion Bay Hotel.
Due to the region’s remoteness, the runway is a pipeline to the small fishing village. The membership-only airport serves tourists coming to ex- perience its world-renowned waves. It will be a critical asset in getting needed supplies to Borrelli’s hotel, Scorpion Bay Hotel, and others in town.
“It’s an interesting story because we are the first new airport in Baja in many years. There were other airports in San Juanico before this, including one in the middle of town, which was not kept up and closed. Another nearby airport was only about 1,800 feet long, with an extreme drop-off into a canyon. I looked into purchasing that one, but there was no way to fill in that drop-off and lengthen the runway. I decided to get 11 hectares, about 27 acres, which would be large enough for what we had planned. It took a lot for me to go to Mexico City, to start at the top under the Secretary of Communica- tions and get a permit to build an aerodrome,” Borrelli began.
“Why did I do this? It gets down to one thing. It was about access for my friends and family to a place that
can be dangerous to get to from the roads. It’s 14 hours from San Diego by car, and you go through sketchy places to get down here. I wanted safety for my friends, family, and the community here. God forbid a surfer breaks their neck, or a fisher- man runs over their leg with a boat propeller; we can stabilize them and get them out in an aircraft. Before, many people would die trying to get to a clinic by car, which didn’t have much to begin with.”
It would take nine years from the initial thought of creating an airport to its opening in 2022. Presently, Scor- pion Bay Airport boasts a 3,200-foot- long by 200-foot-wide hard-packed caliche (a hardened calcium carbon- ate material) runway. However, Bor- relli and Benham could eventually lengthen it by 1,000 feet and pave it if future demand warrants.
“We began developing the airport in 2013, and it was a lengthy process to complete the runway, with many stakeholders involved. If you don’t have the buy-in of all the needed peo- ple up front, then it’s just not going to happen. We worked hard to keep everybody apprised of what we were doing, even when we had these in- credibly long periods of nothing hap- pening. You have to be persistent and keep it going because it takes time in Baja, and if you get too anxious or frustrated, you’ll drive yourself crazy,” Benham said.
“We had an initial operation date in December 2022 when we flew the 421 and landed here. All the naysayers had to say, ‘Wow, they did it!’ That was
a huge day for us and set the tone for the future,” he enthusiastically added.
There was considerable work re- quired to get to this stage, much more than there would have been for a similar airport in the United States. Government involvement greatly aided the effort, from the federal to the local jurisdiction.
The Scorpion Bay development team consisted of multiple parties, in- cluding a local architect, who helped ensure the conceptualization and construction stages went as planned.
“Our architect handled the whole project and was what we would con- sider a general contractor. Their name is on the project, so they want to ensure it gets built to his specifi- cations. He helped us hire locals so that they would have employment in the region. It was amazing what they did to put the hangars’ roofs on, for example, in the middle of nowhere. The guys were using two ropes and a pole; there were no cranes or cherry pickers to hold anything up,” Bor- relli said.
Benham provided an overview of one of the other challenges they faced when creating the airport’s in- frastructure and selecting and grad- ing acreage for the runway. The team needed to move local fauna and flora to proceed with the development.
“Our biggest goal with the airport is to develop it with both the social and environmental concerns incor- porated from the beginning into the plans. We wanted to have an airport that supports the local community,
November 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 9