Malaga airport information

Malaga airport is the starting point for many tourists looking to experience the southern of Spain during their holiday.

From Malaga airport is easy to reach destinations such as Granada and Sierra Nevada, Cadiz, Seville, Ceuta...and the transportation options from the airport are wide and not too expensive.

Are you coming to Malaga? then welcome to Malaga airport.

The history of Malaga Airport dates back a hundred years, when by 1919 the French engineer Pierre Latécoère overflew Malaga when looking for a location in order to establish an airline connecting France with the African continent. It was by this time that started the first flights between Toulouse, Malaga, Tangier and Casablanca. Since then, Malaga Airport has come a long way and has undergone several expansions and a continuous modernization responding to the increasing demand of tourism on Spain’s popular Costa del Sol.

March 9 is an important date in Malaga. That day of the year 1919, a small plane which flew from Toulouse to Casablanca tried to land on the Misericordia beaches. Not finding a safe area where landing because the intense rain from the night before, the plane ended landing between the Carretera de Cádiz and Churriana. Those areas would be those who now occupy the Malaga airport.

Georges Pierre Latecoere, French aircraft pilot, was the main driver of the Malaga airport facilities, to make the first airline to transited Spain, Societe Lignes Aériennes Latecoere.

Our airport is one of the oldest airports in Spain, as in that French project it was required to create a facility in Barcelona, Alicante and Malaga. The flight left Toulouse on March 8, 1919, with Latecoere and Lemaitre at the plane controls, after spending the night in Alicante morning they flew to Malaga, where they refueled, and from there they flew to Casablanca.

The engineer and Frenchman bought the land for the airport in 1920 where he built the first terminal of flights in Malaga.

In the recent years, Malaga airport has undergone the major transformation in its history, a project developed by Aena which places it as the standard among the main tourist airports in the Mediterranean.

The new terminal building T3 at Malaga airport is a design by architect Bruce S. Fairbanks and is positioned as a continuation of the existing terminal by its north facade, so that, with this design, it manages to integrate all three terminals under the concept of a single terminal for users to carry out an easy and functional transit.

A large public plaza open to the Mediterranean light, taking in the brightness of the Costa del Sol, is the first thing users will see, when arriving at Malaga Airport.

In the atrium that opens to the arrivals hall is situated the module, a new concept, where converge all the possible means of transportation to the airport, allowing users quick and easy access to airport.

The transport hub of the T3 terminal connects the new terminal, the bus station, pedestrian access to car parks P1 and P2 and RENFE suburban train station. This communications center is a key to the success of Malaga Airport, which facilitates the connection of different transport options.

With this exchanger at Malaga airport the passenger can easily reach the preferred means of transport from a bus station, the taxi area, walkways to the parking of vehicles and a new railway station communicating Malaga with Fuengirola and the airport.

At Malaga airport are the works for the second runway well underway and now is beginning the final phase of construction work, which will be completed in nine months. However, the commissioning of this infrastructure will be delayed until late 2011, once it passes the checks of the Spanish Agency for Aviation Safety.

The complexity of the project explains that once the works are completed, have to be done several months of paperwork, tests and system-wide connections to the airport, so you will have to wait until late 2011 for its entry into service, doubling the current capacity of Malaga.

As significant information, the runway will have a length of 3,090 meters, which will allow operating in Málaga new generation of aircrafts, which have more capacity and larger dimensions.

Therefore, the second runway will lead to a large increase in travelers and Málaga becomes the major intermodal center in southern Spain. Malaga airport has taken an important step, thanks to the reduced time of the AVE high speed train, which brings passengers the city centre to connect them with the rest of Spain.

The new suburban train station near the airport is located just 30 meters from the Terminal 3 and will be equipped with a structure linking the access between the two points. The facilities include escalators, air conditioning, remote information panels and vending machines to facilitate the purchase of tickets.

In terms of accessibility, the stations have elevators and platforms tailored to the trains, whose car plant has a ramp to the height of the platform that automatically displays with the opening of doors and furthermore has two seats for wheelchair users with anchorages and seat belts.

Recommended transport from Malaga airport

When coming to Malaga, a good choice is booking everything ahead of time, even more if we are coming in high season like summer.

For the transport, we choose car hire Malaga airport as the featured option for moving from and to the airport when we have to leave Malaga.

Pirces for hiring a car at Malaga airport are low, we don´t even need to pay online, so we can have peace of mind when reserving online.

Malaga is entering the club of Spanish airports equipped with more than one runway (Madrid has four, Barcelona, three, and there are two in Palma de Mallorca and Gran Canaria). However, it is the fourth in number of passengers.

Regarding air transport, Malaga is now the outstanding province in southern Europe; regarding tourism it already since the middle of last century.

I will try to keep this hub about Malaga airport updated if I see interest on it, so please leave your comments and have a nice landing! :-)