Located in El Matorral, just five kilometres from the island capital of Puerto del Rosario, Fuerteventura Airport plays a key role in tourism development on the island.

Most of the flights from the airport are to European Union countries. Germany and the United Kingdom represent 79 per cent of the international traffic. Domestic traffic centres around three destinations: Gran Canaria, Madrid - Barajas and Tenerife Norte.

In 2005, the airport received 4,071,875 passengers on the 40,415 flight operations handled. 3,179 tonnes of cargo were transported.

Currently Spain's 10th busiest airport, Fuerteventura Airport receives just over 4 million passengers each year. A large number of these passengers come from the UK, Germany and other EU countries as well as the Spanish mainland. In Spanish it is known as Aeropuerto de Fuerteventura.

Although there are no trains at the airport it is easy to book your private Fuertevenura airport transfers or jump into a waiting Fuerteventura airport taxi.

There are two bus routes from the airport. The main Fuerteventura Airport bus leaves every 30 or so minutes and runs between the main town of Puerto del Rosario, the airport and Caleta de Fuste. The fares are cheap at around €1.10. The second bus runs between Puerto del Rosario, the airport and Morro Jable, the service is not that frequent and costs around €7.30.

There is no shortage of parking at Fuerteventura Airport with over 1200 spaces available for private cars. There is a further 300 spaces available for hire cars and parking for 60 coaches.

As with all airports there is no shortage of shopping and eating facilities at Fuerteventura Airport but please remeber that the Canary Islands do not enjoy the same duty free allowances as the rest of Spain.

History

The situation of the island of Fuerteventura on the route from Cabo Juby to Las Palmas and Tenerife made it an obligatory stopover for all plans to link the Peninsular and the Canary Islands at the start of the 20th century. In the thirties, the airline Líneas Aéreas Postales Españolas (LAPE) prepared land between the sea and the Tetir road to serve as an ancillary airfield for its flights.

In 1940, in order to serve the Archipelago Defence Plan, work was started on a military airdrome in the municipal district of Tefía. The airport officially opened to civil domestic and international traffic in 1959. The airport's geographical situation, far from Puerto de Cabras, the most important point on the island, and the increase in commercial flights, made it necessary for a new location to be found for the island's airport.

The island's orography meant that the airport could be transferred to a new location nearer the capital. It was finally decided to move it to land in Los Estancos, only five kilometres from Puerto Rosario. In 1952, Tefía airport finally closed to traffic and the new location was opened.

Transfer to El Matorral

The rapid growth in demand and the problems of the location -continual gusty wind- obliged the airport to be transferred once again, this time beside the coast to a place known as El Matorral.

On 14 September 1969, El Matorral, in the town of Puerto del Rosario, was officially inaugurated. The first plane to land at the new runway was a Focker 27 of Iberia, which flew the Las Palmas-Fuerteventura-Lanzarote route.

In 1973, El Matorral began to operate its first flights to European countries with the airline Condor, which flew directly between the German city of Dusseldorf and Puerto del Rosario. Over the next few years, the airport experienced considerable growth in the number of operations, which gave rise in 1978 to the first of a series of improvements to adapt the airdrome to the needs of travellers.

In 1992, the airport received more than 1,600,000 passengers, which obliged it to make extensive alterations to the terminal area and aircraft apron. In 1994, construction began on a new terminal building, an aircraft apron, a taxiway, a power plant and a new access road.

The work was rounded off with the extension of the car park and the diversion of the section of road from Puerto de Rosario to Matorral by just over two kilometres, 1.5 of which are dual carriageway.

The new facilities mean that five million passengers can be received a year, with busy periods reaching 3,100 passengers an hour.

Fuerteventura Airport - AENA airport

Address:
Matorral s/n 35610 Fuerteventura/Las Palmas

Airport Code: FUE

Telephone: 0034 928 860 600

E-mail:

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

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

7874 x 148 feet
2400 x 45 meters

Navaids

Fuerteventura Airport - AENA airport

The content above was published at Airports-Worldwide.com in 2006.
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