CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Places & Architecture

Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport

airport in Belize

Architectural plans, a scale model, maps and brass measuring instruments
Places and architectureInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ1657585 ↗
Source-derived summary

Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport (formerly Belize City Municipal Airport) (IATA: TZA, ICAO: MZBE) is an airport serving Belize City, Belize. It is only one mile from the city center, and is more centrally located to the city than is Belize City International Airport. It mostly provides travel to Belize's cayes, allowing faster passage to the cayes than by boat or water taxi. The airport is named after the late Belizean politician and entrepreneur Barry Bowen.

The head office of Maya Island Air is on the airport. Tropic Air also has a terminal at this airport with multiple flights every day.

Facilities

In 2012, a project to upgrade and modernize the airport was initiated. Improvements included extending the runway, constructing a new access road, adding a taxiway, and installing a new lighting system. The project was completed in November 2016 at a total cost of BZ$17 million.

Airlines and destinations

Shuttles

Belize Shuttles and Private Transfers provides regularly scheduled shuttles from the airport to Placencia, San Ignacio, Hopkins, and water taxi terminals.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport” is airport in Belize. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Barry, Bowen and Municipal, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA strong orientation record where physical form, institutional use and historical geography need to be read together. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2016—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Barry, Bowen and Municipal is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “airport in Belize” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1657585. Authority coordinates are 17.516, -88.192. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2012 and 2016.

Critical limits

Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Treat names, boundaries and functions as historically changeable. Maps, plans, inventories and administrative records can clarify what the place meant at different dates.

Best used for
  • Historic place names
  • Jurisdictional context
  • Routes into maps and plans
Verify next

Contemporary maps, plans, listed-building records, estate papers and the responsible local or national archive.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport primary sources, Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport archive and Barry research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport”?
  2. Which authority defined the place, boundary or structure at the relevant date?
  3. What physical evidence or contemporary plan supports the description?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sir Barry Bowen Municipal Airport” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.