Girona-Costa Brava Airport

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Girona-Costa Brava Airport Aeroport de Girona
IATA: GRO - ICAO: LEGE
Summary
Airport type		Public
Operator		Aena
Serves		Girona
Elevation AMSL		465.8 ft (142 m)
Coordinates		41°54′00″N, 2°46′00″E
Runways
Direction	Length		Surface
Direction	ft	m	Surface
02/20	7,874	2,400	Asphalt

Girona-Costa Brava Airport (IATA: GRO, ICAO: LEGE) is an airport located 12km south from the city of Girona, next to the small village of Vilobí d'Onyar, in the north-east of Catalonia, Spain. It is well connected to the Costa Brava, Barcelona and the Pyrenees.

The airport was built in 1965, but it has been only over the last couple of years that the passenger traffic at the Airport has grown spectacularly due to Ryanair choosing it as one of its European hubs.

In 1993 Girona Airport only dealt with 275,000 passengers but by 2005 that number had escalated to more than 3.5 million passengers.

Many people use Girona Airport as an alternative airport for Barcelona. Girona Airport is actually about 100km (62.5 miles) to the north of Barcelona so the transfer times do put some people off. You can transfer into Barcelona via a direct airport bus, taxi or by heading into Girona city and catching one of the trains.

1 Statistics
2 To and around the airport
3 Facilities
4 Airlines
5 Airliner crash, 1999
6 External links
7 Notes and references

[edit] Statistics

Passenger numbers 1996 to 2005:

Year	Passengers	Year	Passengers
1996	480,506	2001	622,410
1997	533,445	2002	557,187
1998	610,607	2003	1,448,796
1999	631,235	2004	2,962,988
2000	651,402	2005	3,533,567

[edit] To and around the airport

From Girona Airport you can easily reach the resorts along the Costa Brava, places such as Lloret de Mar, l'Estartit, Blanes. You are also only about a 40 minute drive from the French border and many people use Girona Airport as a way of getting to the Pyrenees and the Ski Resort of Andorra.

[edit] By car

The airport is served by three main roads: AP-7 (toll road France-South of Spain), C-25 (Lérida-Gerona), and N-II (Madrid-Barcelona-France).

[edit] By bus

There are 4 bus lines operating in the airport:

Airport-Barcelona (1 hour 10 minutes, departure times depending on flights)
Airport-Costa Brava/Maresme (Stops at Tossa de Mar, Lloret de Mar, Blanes, Malgrat de Mar, Santa Susanna, Pineda de Mar and Calella de la Costa),
Airport-North Costa Brava (Stops at Figueres, Roses, Pineda de Mar, Calella de la Costa and Tossa de Mar)
Airport-Girona (25 minutes, one every hour).

[edit] By train

There is no train station at the airport. The closest one is in Girona city. There is a project to build a station for the future AVE line Barcelona-France (Spanish TGV).

[edit] Facilities

There are several companies offering car hire. There are also shops and cafes serving sandwiches and drinks. In the departure lounge there are a restaurant, bar and shops.

There is a parking area (paying) in the airport for 1020 cars and 35 buses.

[edit] Airlines

Ryanair (Aarhus Alghero, Altenburg, Blackpool, Bologna, Bournemouth, Bremen, Brescia, Bristol, Brussels-Charleroi, Cagliari, Doncaster Sheffield, Dublin, Durham Tees Valley, Düsseldorf-Weeze, East Midlands, Eindhoven, Faro, Fuerteventura, Frankfurt-Hahn, Glasgow-Prestwick, Gothenburg-City, Karlsruhe-Baden, Liverpool, London-Luton, London-Stansted, Maastricht [starts June 2, 2007], Malmo, Marrakech, Milan Orio al Serio, Newcastle, Oslo-Torp, Paris-Beauvais, Pescara, Pisa, Porto, Rome-Ciampino, Shannon, Stockholm-Skavsta, Tenerife-North, Trapani, Venice-Treviso)
Spanair (Madrid)
transavia.com (Rotterdam)
Wizz Air (Katowice, Budapest)

Girona Costa Brava also gets important numbers of charters.

[edit] Airliner crash, 1999

See main article Britannia Airways Flight BY226A

On 14 September 1999, at 21:47 UTC, a Boeing 757 charter flight from Cardiff, Wales, UK, with 236 passengers and 9 crew left the runway when landing in a storm and broke apart. After leaving the runway, it ran 343 metres across flat grassland beside the runway, before going diagonally over a substantial earth mound adjacent to the airport boundary, becoming semi airborne as a result. Beyond the mound it hit a number of medium sized trees and the right engine struck the boundary fence. The aircraft then passed through the fence, re-landed in a field and both main landing gears collapsed. It finally stopped after a 244 metre slide across the field. Damage was substantial: the fuselage was broken in two places and the landing gear and both engines detached. Remarkably, there were no fatalities and the injuries were few: 2 serious and 42 minor.^[1] ^[2]