Located 8 kilometres outside Santa Cruz de la Palma, it is a modern airport fully equipped to contribute to the economic growth and development of tourism in the region it serves. In Spanish the airport is knwon as Aeropuerto de La Palma.

Traffic is above all domestic, centring around the airports of Tenerife Norte, Gran Canaria and Madrid-Barajas. Regarding international traffic, its origins and destinations are mainly Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom.

In 2005, the airport recorded a record 1 million passengers (1,145,569) in the 20,792 operations handled. Cargo traffic totalled 1.4 tonnes.

The airport itself is quite a bit smaller than those of it's nieghbouring islands of gran Canaria, Tenerife and Fuerteventura but there are still just over 1 million passengers passing through this airport each year.

Most of the passenger traffic at this airport is via domestic flights from Tenerife North, Madrid, Gran Canaria and Fuerteventura but there are also quite a lot of flights from Germany and a few charter flights from the UK, Holland and Belgium.

The airport is spread over two floors and has a couple of cafes serving hot food and drinks throughout the day and evening, one of the cafes has a kiddies paly area.

There are also a handfull of shops. Of them, Canarienis is a good sized multishop where you can buy "duty free" cigarettes and alcohol. Unlike mainland Spain the Canary Islands have different restrictions on the amount of Duty Free goods that you are allowed to take to and from the Islands.

The Island is quite small and doesn't have a train service but there is a bus service which will take you into the center of Sant Cruz or you can catch a taxi.

The buses leave from outside the main terminal every 30 minutes between 0815 and 2115 each day. The bus fare is €1 and if you require more information you can call the bus company on 0034 922 411 922.

Taxis into town cost around €10-15 depending on when you are traveling.

History

On 19 February 1921, the Ministry of Public Works authorised Gumersindo Acosta Hernández to install an air transport service for the company Marítimo Canaria in the maritime-land area of Tazacorte Beach. This is the first mention of an air service in La Palma. In the fifties, the new economic, educational and health needs gave rise to plans to build a new airport.

The relief of the island, with mountains over 2,300 metres high, made it difficult to find an area of flat land close to the main population centres. A small plain was chosen, located at an altitude of around 350 metres above sea level and about eight kilometres from the capital, Santa Cruz de La Palma. On this plain there was room to build on a strip of land measuring one thousand by one hundred metres. This airport –which would be called Buenavista– was built between 1953 and 1954 and was opened to domestic civil air traffic, international tourist traffic and international technical stopovers on 22nd September 1955.

The air services were carried out by military Junker 52s and a few DC-3s belonging to Iberia, which flew on alternate days to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Due to the frequent rainfall at the new airport, which made the runway unusable, the Ministry of Aviation had to built a tarmac runway. In the summer of 1956, the airport was closed for resurfacing, which would not finalise until the beginning of 1958. At this time the airport had a tarmac runway, designated 03-21, an aircraft parking apron for one sole aircraft and a wooden hut with a corrugated roof that served as its terminal.

New location

During the following years, the rain and crossed winds obliged the suspension of operations on more than fifteen occasions. Neither improvements in the drainage, nor the construction of a taxiway improved the situation, as the proximity of the mountains provoked wind changes and stagnant fog. All these circumstances, together with the physical impossibility of improving the airport, led the aeronautical authorities to look for a new location.

An area of land was chosen, parallel to the coast and almost at sea level, in the municipality of Mazo. Once the project had been drawn up, work was carried out to built a runway –designated 01-19– which opened to traffic on 15 April 1970. The entry into service of this strip and the growing increase in traffic made it advisable to construct a breakwater, which, once filled in, provided a flat area large enough to extend the already existing runway at one end. On 1st April 1980 the new runway was opened to traffic.

La Palma Airport - AENA airport

Address: La Bajita, s/nº. 38738 Villa de Mazo/Sta. Cruz de Tenerife

Telephone: 922 426 140 , 922 426 100

Fax: 922 426 219

E-mail:

URL: http://www.aena.es/lapalma

AENA accepts no responsibility for the information posted at this site neither for the possible damages caused for the use of this information.

Runway 01/19

7218 x 148 feet
2200 x 45 meters

Navaids

Navaids

La Palma Airport - AENA airport

The content above was published at Airports-Worldwide.com in 2006.
We don't guarantee the information is fresh and accurate. The data may be wrong or outdated.
For more up-to-date information please refer to other sources.