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Francisco Mendes International Airport
IATA: RAI ICAO: GVFM
Summary
Airport type	Defunct
Operator	Aeroportos e Segurança Aérea (ASA)
Location	Praia, Cape Verde
Opened	1961 (1961)
Closed	6 October 2005 (2005-10-06)
Coordinates	14°55′34″N 23°29′41″W / 14.9261°N 23.4948°W / 14.9261; -23.4948

Francisco Mendes International Airport (IATA: RAI, ICAO: GVFM) was an airport located on Santiago Island in Cape Verde. It was opened in 1961. It was located about 2 km (1.2 mi) east of central Praia in the southeastern part of the island of Santiago. After Cape Verdean independence, the airport was named after Francisco Mendes, a Guinea-Bissau independence activist and that country's first Prime Minister.

On 28 September 1998, a TACV de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter (registered D4-CAX) carrying Carlos Veiga, then Prime Minister of Cape Verde, 18 other passengers and three crew members crash-landed at the airport. There was one fatality (a bodyguard of the prime minister) and four people were injured.^[1]

In late 2005, the airport was deactivated, and replaced by the new Praia International Airport (since 2012 Nelson Mandela International Airport).

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