Iquique is one of the most important flying sites in Chile offering 360 flying days a year with flights up to 10 hours per day.
It is located in Atacama region in the north of the country and is 1852 km away from the capital, Santiago. Thanks to its exceptional conditions, the pilots could fly 360 days per year, in a perfect landscape. The Alto Hospicio take off is a big slope of the costal ridge facing the sea breeze. From the altitudes you can see the complete extension of the city, the harbour and the beaches. We would like to highlight that Iquique city develops air sports and offers a great number of such activities.
The landing areas prepared for the competition, are located in the main beach of Iquique (Playa Brava), and a fishermen town (Chanavayita) which is few kilometers south of the airport. Both places offer wide areas, good amplitude and excellent orientation. Also sportsmen enjoy the particular attention of the tourists and visitors who are in this part of the year, starting to fill out the hotels and occupy the beaches.
Is well known that in Iquique you can fly all year round. But we would like to emphasise that in October, November and December; flying conditions allow flights between 7 to 10 hours per day. That gives a base for such spectacular achievements like Tom Weissenberger’s out and return world record in 2013.
But Iquique is much more than flights. On the Cavancha beach you can practice world class surfing and other nautical sports like sailing, kayaking or nautical sky. All these outdoor activities could be done all year round.
The Atacama Desert offers a lot of off road expeditions in mountain bikes or 4x4, and you have the chance to visit old “miner ghost towns” like Humberstone or Santa Laura office the heritage of the golden age of the saltpetre. Both offices look just like they were 100 years ago, giving the impression the people left the town just a couple of days ago.
Iquique has population over 200.000 people. There are some old quarters located in the core of the city - the legacy of the saltpetre age like the public walking baquedano, with big Gregorian style porches. There are other attractions as well as duty free mall, the biggest in South America, one public walk with cycle routes rounded of palm trees and attractions like the skate park besides the beach. There are as much as 170 km of beaches to the south of the city, some of them rarely visited by tourists and locals.
The city shows its great tourist potential with the big offer of restaurants and bars, where is possible to find any kind of flavours, different influences of the Chinese and Peruvian cuisine, and of course the national cuisine with a wide variety of sea food. This entire atmosphere is spicy with the on-fire nights of the city.

Restrictions and airspace.
The Diego Aracena airport is located at 35 km to south of the city and it is a restricted flight area, but thanks to the goodwill of our aeronautical authorities, for the date of the Iquique open, we will have one corridor, this will enable us to create tasks across this zone, and take advantage of the costal ridge there and fly in the most technical places of this area just near the airfield.

Flight conditions.
The flight conditions vary in the day between 2 m/s to 6 m/s with winds in range of 8 to 25 k/h, and the Atacama desert give the chance to land almost in every place without obstacles; even over the city, in the big dune of the Dragon hill, for almost 4 km within the same city.

Take offs
Alto Hospicio - 490m ASL 20º16'54.6"S 070º06'28.0"W
This take off has West orientation, with a surface of 2500 square meters and a lot of the open areas around enough to support about 100 pilots, considering both hang gliders and paragliders, with an average launch of 6 pilots per minute. From the main square of the city, it takes 15 minutes to reach the take off ground.

Patillos - 170 m. ASL 20º44'20.2"S 070º09'23.5"W
This take off has West orientation, with a surface of 300 square meters and open area to support about 60 hang glider pilots, with an average of 1 pilot every 3 minutes. From the main square of the city, it takes 45 minutes to reach the take off spot.