Cusco Airport to Suspend Flights for Over Seven Hours on November 15 During Pope Leo XIV's Visit

Alejandro Velasco Astete International Airport in Cusco, Peru, will suspend commercial flight operations for more than seven hours on November 15, 2026, for security reasons tied to Pope Leo XIV's visit to the city.

Peruvian airport operator Corpac confirmed that the restriction will begin at 7:45 a.m. and will affect 14 scheduled commercial flights during the middle of the day.

Cusco is the main aviation gateway for travelers visiting Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley. Local authorities say the Pope is expected to arrive in Cusco on November 15, with activities planned around Sacsayhuamán.

Closures of this kind are a familiar feature of papal and head-of-state visits: security perimeters take priority over scheduled traffic, and the airport that serves the destination is often the first piece of infrastructure to be restricted. At a gateway that funnels visitors toward Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley, a block of more than seven hours in the middle of the day removes the window in which most onward connections would normally operate.

For airlines serving Cusco, a fixed block of this length generally means some combination of retiming flights to either side of the closure, consolidating rotations, or cancelling them, with the knock-on effect landing on aircraft and crew positioning elsewhere in the network. Charter and private operators face the same constraint, since the restriction applies to commercial operations at the airport as a whole during the stated period.

The next milestone is Corpac's confirmation of the exact reopening time and which of the 14 affected flights airlines choose to retime versus cancel, which will show how much of the disruption is absorbed by schedule changes and how much by lost frequencies.