Santa Maria airport and the American years: the 1944 base, the airport cinema and the Quonset huts

Most visitors to Santa Maria land on the runway, collect a hire car and drive straight past one of its oddest corners. The airport district just outside Vila do Porto was built by the Americans in 1944, and for twenty years it was a busy little town of its own, with a cinema, a club, a church and its own radio station. Today it is a quiet, protected neighbourhood. You can see what is left in an hour, or in an evening if you catch a film in the 1944 cinema.

In the Second World War the Allies needed a second airfield in the Azores, alongside Lajes on Terceira, to move aircraft and troops across the Atlantic. Pan American technicians arrived on Santa Maria in December 1943 to confirm the site, the flat, dry west of the island. Portuguese workers hired by Pan Am and American army engineers then used nearly two million pounds of dynamite to level the ground for the runways.

The first aircraft, a US Douglas C-47 carrying materials and bread from Terceira, landed on 8 August 1944. The base was activated on 17 October 1944. By the end of that month the island held 282 American servicemen, 1,459 American civilian workers and 1,256 Portuguese labourers, some of them brought over from São Miguel.

The airport was formally inaugurated on 26 July 1945, with a runway of 3,048 m, still the longest in the Azores. The war ended soon after. On 2 June 1946 the Americans handed the base to Portugal and moved their operation to Lajes.

Before jets could cross the Atlantic in one hop, airliners between Europe and the Americas had to refuel somewhere, and Santa Maria was on the way. From the late 1940s to the end of the 1960s the airport was a regular refuelling stop on the Atlantic crossing, and the airport staff and their families became a community of their own on an island of farmers. In the late 1970s Air France still brought Concorde through once a week on its Paris to Caracas service to refuel.

Longer-range aircraft ended all that. Today the scheduled traffic is the flights to Ponta Delgada and a link to Lisbon, and the long runway mostly waits for diversions and technical stops.

Around the runway the Americans built a small town: houses, a hotel, a gym, a church, a hospital and a cinema with seats for about a thousand people. After 1946 the Portuguese airport staff moved in, and it carried on as the airport's own neighbourhood.

In 2017 the Azores government made the whole Lugar do Aeroporto a protected site, a "conjunto de interesse público". The decree describes eleven residential bairros, named after the island's parishes and places such as Anjos, São Lourenço, Santa Bárbara and Almagreira, laid out with wide streets, trees and modernist houses that were new to the archipelago at the time. Walk through one or two of them and the planned, airy layout looks nothing like the villages elsewhere on the island.

Things to look for on a slow drive or walk:

• The church of Nossa Senhora do Ar, Our Lady of the Air, in the airport district. Bus 3 has a stop named after it, Igreja do Aeroporto.
• The Clube Asas do Atlântico, founded in October 1946 under the name Clube do Ganso, and housed in a building kept from the American years. The club also ran a radio station that was heard across the islands.

People live here, so treat it as a neighbourhood rather than an open-air museum: park where it is allowed and do not photograph through windows.

The best way into the period is the cinema. Atlântida Cine was built by the Americans in 1944 while the airport was going up. In its heyday it showed the latest Hollywood films and music-hall acts, and touring Portuguese and foreign performers played there. It closed in 2007, was restored and reopened in June 2022. It now belongs to the Museu de Santa Maria and is used for films, theatre, concerts and talks.

There is no daily programme. In June 2026, for example, there were six screenings that month, mostly at 21:00, with one Sunday afternoon show for families. Look up "Atlântida Cine" on the regional events site What's On Azores before you go; if a film is on during your stay, it is worth an evening just to sit in the building.

The Museu de Santa Maria also looks after a pair of Quonset huts in the airport district. These were the prefabricated, half-cylinder buildings of corrugated metal that the American forces put up everywhere in the war, because they were easy to ship and assemble. On Santa Maria the two adjoining huts served as housing or stores.

Opening arrangements for the huts and the cinema are handled by the museum, and the published opening hours do not agree with each other. Ring the museum on +351 296 884 844 or email museu.smaria.info@azores.gov.pt before you plan around a visit. The main museum building, a rural house in Santo Espírito, covers the island's pottery and farming life and makes a good pair with the airport district: one shows the island before 1944, the other what arrived that year.

Most of what the airport does today happens out of sight. When the Americans left, Santa Maria became the seat of an oceanic air traffic control centre, and it still is. NAV Portugal runs the Santa Maria flight information region from here: 5.18 million km² of the North Atlantic plus the whole of the Azores. In 2024 its controllers handled 197,897 flights, about 541 a day. It is one of the largest pieces of controlled airspace in the world, run from an island of about 97 km².

The airport district sits just outside Vila do Porto, so it costs almost nothing to add to a day.

• On arrival or departure: give yourself half an hour before you check in or after you land, and drive through the bairros and past the church.
• With the bus: route 3 runs from the harbour in Vila do Porto past the airport and the Hotel de Santa Maria. In the timetable TSM published in September 2026 it ran hourly on weekdays from 07:30 to 17:30 and on Saturday mornings only, with nothing on Sundays.
• In the evening: if Atlântida Cine has a screening, combine dinner in Vila do Porto with the film.

Who built Santa Maria airport? American forces and Pan American, with Portuguese workers hired by Pan Am, in 1944. The first aircraft landed on 8 August 1944, and the airport was formally inaugurated on 26 July 1945.

Why is the runway so long? It was built for wartime transatlantic traffic and then served as a refuelling stop for airliners crossing the Atlantic until the late 1960s. At 3,048 m it is the longest runway in the Azores.

Can you visit the airport cinema? Yes, when something is on. Atlântida Cine, built in 1944 and reopened in June 2022, hosts films, theatre and concerts a few times a month. Check What's On Azores for the programme.

What is the Lugar do Aeroporto? The neighbourhood the Americans built around the airport, with eleven residential bairros, a church, a hotel and the cinema. It has been a protected site since 2017.