Airlines Flying to Malaga Airport

Somebody asked me last summer which airline flies to Malaga from East Midlands. I had no idea, and I have lived here since 2007. There are 53 airlines using this airport and 169 non-stop routes, so nobody carries that in their head, least of all the person selling you a transfer.

What follows is who actually flies here now, which UK and Irish airports have a direct route worth knowing about, and the terminal detail that trips people up on the way home.

Who flies to Malaga

From the UK and Ireland the workhorses are Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2.com, British Airways, TUI Airways and Aer Lingus, with Wizz Air and Norwegian on a narrower set of routes. Between them they cover most regional airports, not just London.

The Spanish carriers matter more than people expect if you are connecting: Vueling, Iberia Express, Air Europa and Air Nostrum all serve Malaga, and Vueling in particular runs a wide European network through Barcelona.

Beyond Europe the list is shorter than the airport's size suggests. Qatar Airways, Etihad, Emirates' partners, Turkish Airlines, United, Air Transat and Royal Air Maroc Express give you long-haul connections, but there is no direct scheduled service from the UK's usual long-haul hubs to anywhere exotic here. Malaga is a European short-haul airport with a few long arms.

The UK and Ireland routes worth knowing

Malaga is a British and Irish airport in all but name. Nine of the twenty busiest European routes are UK or Irish, and London Gatwick alone carries more passengers here than any other city pair.

Practical read on that: if you are flying from a regional airport, you almost certainly have a direct option and do not need to route through London. Bristol and Birmingham both carry more traffic here than Paris Charles de Gaulle does.

Terminals, and the one that catches people out

Terminal 1 is closed to passengers and has been since 2010, when non-Schengen flights moved across to Pier C. If your booking, a taxi driver or an old guide mentions T1, ignore it. It is not a thing any more.

That leaves T2, opened in 1991, and T3, opened in 2010. They are joined by a walkway and function as one building. Check-in for every airline is in T3, and you are then sent to a gate that may be in either terminal, so read the gate on your boarding pass rather than assuming your airline has a home terminal.

More on that in our guide to hiring a car at Malaga airport.

Getting hold of an airline

The old version of this page listed a phone number for every carrier. Those numbers were mostly Spanish 902 premium-rate lines, and the 902 range has been retired for customer service, so most of them now ring out or cost you to reach a recording.

Airlines have moved this to their apps and websites, and for a delayed or cancelled flight that is genuinely the faster route. The app usually rebooks you before the desk queue has moved. Keep the booking reference on your phone rather than in an email you will have to hunt for on airport wifi.

Worth knowing your position if it goes wrong: for any flight departing from Spain, EU air passenger rights apply regardless of which country the airline is from. That covers assistance during a long delay and compensation for cancellations inside the airline's control. It applies to a Ryanair flight to Manchester exactly as it does to a Lufthansa one to Frankfurt.

Once you have landed, the getting from the airport to your resort guide covers the train, the bus and what a taxi actually costs.