Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

The old stagers will remember the excitement caused by the annoucement that the Province of Huelva (the only one in Spain not to have an airport) was to have one at Gibraleon or was it Lepe. Well the Credit Crunch must have put that back 20yrs or so.

Quietly without fanfare Portugal has pushed ahead with it determination to open up the Alentajo and has refurbished a military airport at BEJA for civilian flights. At first sight this might not seem a decent alternative to Faro or Sevilla but it does give us a third string to our bow and with the extensive road improvements from Castro Marim to Beja the time is about the same as Sevilla airport. So far it has been a slow start the opening flight was a special internal fight to Cape Verde followed by a series of Charter flights by Sunvil from Heathrow to Beja. So far bookings have been slow for the packages so they may be selling seat only flights.

The sad thing is that Ryanair did look at making the new airport a maintenance hub but it took so long to open up that they have made Faro their base down here.

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

It does look as though Sunvil are only offering packages at the moment. But if they don't sell they may offer seats only in the future.

They are going to use a 49 seater chartered from BMI flying weekly on a Sunday.

You never know; if it works out BMI might consider its own route.

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

And you can get from Beja to Ayamonte without using a toll road!:)

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

Nice one!

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

If anyone takes the C. Marim-Beja trip we'd be interested in knowing the road condition (and driving time) as we may take that road to BEJA-Evora (and on to Lisbon) to avoid the new tolls on the A-22 (if they're in force when we go).

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

P.S. For those interested ..we finally signed the "escrituras" for La Colina and Wilfredo will be installing our Central Air unit.

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

We have made the trip CE to Lisbon 3 times now and each time go via Beja and return via the motorway. The trip up as far as Beja is fine at the CE end the road has been improved and there is so little traffic you may as well be on the motorway When you get futher on the road is a typical metal'd country road but with no traffic is a pleasurable drive. After Beja you have a choice you can head west on a single carriageway N road with lots of traffic or continue north and join the east west motorway to the south end of the Targus bridge. The bridge and the motorway are tolled.We have done both and on balance the motorway E/W was the better option but cost. The trip south costs about 34€ and if you add the additional 12€ for the new toll at his end you would be looking at about 45€ one way.

The answer is to let the train take the strain, for 65yrs + VRStoA to Faro is 4€ return and Faro Lisbon is 16€ return just need your passport to prove your age. Then get a 3 day underground ticket in Lisbon very good value and the traffic in Lisbon is bad so you will not use your car anyway.

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

Welcome to our growing community and good choices. Don't forget to join the Residents association and be part of the "in-crowd".

Re: Altertnative airport for Ayamonte
 

From what I have read, it seems that Beja (airport code BYJ when searching for flights) is targeting Dutch and German holidaymakers for 2012. I presume this is because Faro is the main airport for flights from the British Isles (53 out of today's 67 departures) andenables passengers to mix and match their inbound and outbound flights with a large number of airlines.

Faro is our main choice when visiting CE, but we recently used the new East Midlands - Seville route with Ryanair. Ryanair is not our airline of choice - we were seventh of seven Ryanair flights leaving early that morning and passengers for all other Ryanair flights were called to the front of the "fast" bag drop queue as each of the earlier flights closed. However, each flight left bang on time.The advantage of using Seville is that we could spend the day there before we headed for CE.

Google maps suggests that the journey to Beja airport will take a little longer than the journey to Seville.