Chimbu Airport — Kundiawa, Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea's mountainous highlands make road travel between towns notoriously difficult, and CMU exists precisely to solve that problem for Kundiawa, the capital of Simbu (also spelled Chimbu) Province. Steep terrain and frequent cloud cover throughout the highlands make flying here a genuinely challenging undertaking for pilots, a characteristic shared with many small airstrips scattered across PNG's interior. Small turboprop aircraft operated by domestic carriers connect Kundiawa with Port Moresby and other highland towns like Goroka and Mount Hagen, carrying everything from passengers to essential cargo in a region where the alternative overland routes can take many hours over rough roads. Coffee growing sustains much of the local economy in this densely populated highland province, and the airport plays an outsized logistical role in moving both people and goods through otherwise isolated terrain.