Almeria airport ok (Almeria International Airport (LEI))

Member Name: mumsymary

Product:	Almeria International Airport (LEI)
Date:	06/04/02 (562 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: small, clean, easy to find

Disadvantages: one desk open to departurelounge, few facilities, no direct rail link

Almeria airport Spain

Waiting at the airport after a wonderful holiday I thought I would pass the time by writing my impressions about the airport. Hope this will help someone if they should be using this airport.

Where does Almeria Airport serve?
Obviously the airport serves the small city of Almeria, but also the coastline of the province of Almeria and Nerja. From here it is slightly further to Granada than from Malaga, but closer to the southern foothills of the Sierra Nevada. It is definitely quicker to the mini-Hollywood area of the Tabernas (the semi-desert region where spaghetti westerns like a Fistful of Dollars) were (are?) made and to the beautiful but arid, coastline of the Caba de Gata. The only big nearby resort is Roquetas de Mar (outside the Natural Park) but the far more attractive, small resorts of San Jose and Las Negras (inside the Park) offer plenty of cheap accommodation and very relaxed atmospheres.

With 340 sunny days a year and virtually no rainfall on the other 25 days, this is an ideal area for winter and early season breaks.


Well, we arrived at the airport at the time advised 2½ hrs before the flight .We were flying with Airtours. We were informed that there would be an hour?s wait until the departure gates opened. (Grumbles from dearly beloved ?I told you that we needn?t get here so early, humph?) So we sat down; dearly beloved to go to sleep, myself to write. A lot of people decided to stand and wait in a queue, maybe so they could be sure and sit together, We decided we didn?t need to prove our love for each other, we could bear the parting for 2 ½ hrs, after all we have been married for 26 yrs.


So I looked around the reception lounge. A small airport, it is fairly clean and spacious ( it is early in the season though, I expect it gets busier in the summer) with 16 check-in flight desks,
Information about flights over flight desks is poorly displayed as sunlight reflects
on the information. I could see no other flight information boards but there were occasional ?tannoy? instructions in Spanish, German and English.

Other facilities were

Several car hire desks including Europcar, Avis, Hertz

Kiosks for airlines including; Iberia, Condor, Airtours, Lufthansa.

A cash point, for changing money.

A restaurant, café area which looked good and clean.
(A few items from the menu were Calamari 6.70 euros, Patatas fritas 2.49 euro, Ensalata russa 5.26 euros,
Platos combinatos - fillette de ternera, tortilla francessa, patatas fritas, pimiento frio 8.05 euros.
Platos combination - sauchichas, hamberguesa, (guessa what that is!) huevas fritos, lechuga .6.55euros.
(A euro was about 61p when we were there.)

So, we got checked in and we did get seats together as the plane was not full.
To get through security checks into the departure lounge was crazy, took forever. There only seemed to be one entrance in operation and another standing unused. People in front got indignant when others pushed into the queue (apparently their flight was due before ours and they were advised to go to the front of our queue). Why wasn?t more than one entrance gate to the departure lounge open? We were eventually all through 10 minutes before the indicated take-off time and there was never going to be long enough to get everyone through the boarding gate and out to the plane in 10 mins.

Departure lounge had.
Only just enough seating, fairly comfortable seats
Very small cafeteria area.
Small duty free area
TV playing nearly inaudible Spanish programmes
Toilet area, with only 4 cubicles in ladies, didn?t see any baby changing facilities. 1 disabled toilet seemed spacious and adequate.

We are not called to board yet but people are already queuing. Why do they do that? They already had their seats allocated, surely the couple who keep telling the
ir children off would have been better sat down reading/telling them a story, or playing I spy, or something. Half-hour later, flight boarding slowly, blamed on extra security; but the last 100 were just waved through as we were now 40 minutes later than predicted take-off time. Staff seemed pleasant enough. We wait till nearly last and get straight into our seats without all that standing about.

Here we are eventually ready for take off, sat in our seats 1 hour late. Goodbye Spain - till next time.

Summary: