Noumea
Note: All charts for Noumea (NWWW) are available from the AIP Overseas France Website.
Noumea - La Tontouta (ICAO: NWWW; IATA: NOU) is the major airport for the French territory of New Caledonia. It is the main transit point for tourists from around the world seeking the island's heady mix of French and Melanesian culture, and South Pacific tropical beauty.
It has one runway - 11/29. Due to high ground to the south of the airport, most approaches are performed onto runway 11 (it is the only ILS approach), and where possible departures are performed from runway 29. There are no runway-end taxiways and the terminal is located roughly halfway along the runway, so all departures and long-running arrivals will require a back-track.
NOTE: there are issues with some of the NWWW terminal procedures used by several popular payware aircraft.
The arrivals controller will confirm that you have working procedures in your FMC, and if you encounter any issues you will be provided with vectors to the approach.
RNAV Arrivals
Runway 11 is equipped with an ILS and most of the NWWW arrival procedures feed into this approach. All STARs are now RNAV only. Pilots unable to fly the RNAV arrivals should indicate this in their flight plan, and inform controllers on initial contact in order to receive vectors to the ILS approach.
Flights from Wellington can expect to be assigned the ATSAR ONE ALFA (ATSAR1A) arrival. Because of the likelihood of backtracks on the runway for arrivals and departures, and opposing departures on runway 29, pilots should anticipate being asked to join the hold at PEPIT.
Departures
Flights departing Noumea for Dunedin/Christchurch can expect to be assigned one of the following departures depending on the active runway.
- Noumea Runway 11: BASSA TWO EAST (BASSA2E) -- Caution the right turn at 2nm to avoid rising terrain.
- Noumea Runway 29: BASSA TWO WEST (BASSA2W) -- Caution this departure is in opposition to the ILS approach.