A plane on the ground at Girona-Costa Brava Airport. Photo by Grobuonis.
Girona-Costa Brava Airport (IATA code GRO) is located 12 kilometres outside Girona, in Vilobí d’Onyar. It opened in 1965 to serve the area in the early days of mass tourism. However, these days it also functions as a secondary airport for visitors heading to Barcelona.
The airport has a single 2,400 metre runway and initial passenger growth in the 1970s came from summer charter flights. A new terminal and additional aircraft parking were added to accommodate the additional passengers but by the early 1990s only 275,000 passengers passed through the airport.
By the early 2000s was serving around half a million passengers, still far less than was felt to be its potential. But when Ryanair established Girona-Costa Brava as one of its European hubs the growth in passenger numbers exploded.
During this time the airport seemed to be in a constant state of redevelopment. Every time I went there it seemed to be different as a new terminal building went up, the old one was knocked down and, one by one, a number of multi-storey car parks popped up.
Passenger numbers peaked at 5.5 million in 2008, after which numbers fell. In 2015 passenger numbers dropped to fewer than 1.8 million, although that has since picked up to just under 2 million.
The reason for the decline is twofold. Girona-Costa Brava Airport’s numbers were adversely affected first by the global economic crisis and then by the expansion of Barcelona Airport. When the new terminal opened it created spare capacity in the old terminals.
After T1 became operational the airport offered discounted landing slots in terminals 2A, 2B and 2C to the no-frills airlines. Ryanair moved many of its Girona flights to Barcelona and even threatened to leave the Costa Brava’s airport completely at one point.
More about Girona-Costa Brava Airport
