Cusco airport stops flights for seven hours on 15 November for Pope Leo XIV's visit

Pope Leo XIV arrives in Peru on Wednesday 11 November for a six-day visit to the country where he was bishop of Chiclayo from 2015 to 2023. He spends most of it in Lima and the north, but on Sunday 15 November he flies to Cusco for a morning, and the city's airport closes to other flights while he is there. If you have a flight to or from Cusco that day, or plans in Lima on 11, 12 or 16 November, check them now. Times below are Peru time, UTC−5.

Cusco on 15 November

The Vatican's programme has the pope flying in from Chiclayo and landing at Alejandro Velasco Astete airport at 10am. At 10:30am he meets the faithful and representatives of popular devotion at the Sacsayhuamán archaeological park, on the hill above the city, and at 11:45am he leads the Angelus prayer in the square in front of the cathedral, on the Plaza de Armas. He leaves for Pucallpa, in the Amazon, at 1:05pm.

Corpac, the state company that runs the airport, says 14 commercial flights are affected. No flights will operate from 7:45am to 3:05pm, the airport's manager, Jonathan Pareja Mendoza, told the state news agency Andina, as El Peruano reported. The civil aviation authority has told airlines not to schedule anything in that window, and the last arrival before it lands at 7:15am, the city's transport manager said, according to La República. The airport says rebooking is up to the airlines, which are to contact their passengers, and that there may be a single way in and out of the terminal that day.

The government has made 15 November a compensable non-working day in the Cusco region, under a decree published on 23 October. Airports, transport, hotels and restaurants are among the services allowed to keep working.

Lima and the north

The pope lands at the Callao air base at 5:30pm on Wednesday 11 November, the Vatican's programme says, and holds a prayer vigil with young people at 6pm the next day. That vigil has moved from the Estadio Monumental named in the programme to the Estadio Nacional, Infobae reported. He spends 13 and 14 November in Chiclayo and Santa Cruz de Succhabamba. On Monday 16 November he says a farewell Mass at 10:30am at the Las Palmas air base in Santiago de Surco, where the Archdiocese of Lima expects more than a million people, Infobae reported, and he leaves for Rome at 1:45pm.

Lima and Callao have non-working days on 11 November, from 1pm on 12 November and on 16 November. Cajamarca, La Libertad, Lambayeque and Piura have theirs on 13 and 14 November, and Ucayali, around Pucallpa, shares 15 November with Cusco.

If you are travelling that week

Peru's tourism minister, Rogers Valencia, said on 26 October that flights for the visit dates were fully booked and that about 800,000 people, some 50,000 of them from abroad, would travel to the four cities, Andina reported. If you fly into or out of Cusco on 15 November, confirm the new times with your airline, and leave early for the airport: the municipality advises planning the journey in advance and using alternative routes.

We found no announcement about Sacsayhuamán's hours on 15 November, though it is the venue for the morning's meeting and one of the sites on the Boleto Turístico, or about any change to the Machu Picchu trains. Ask your hotel or tour operator before you plan that day. The Vatican said on 26 October that the trip would go ahead as published after the pope's surgery for lung cancer earlier in the month, Andina reported.