Departure
96%
vs 95% ▲ 1
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport is a major international gateway on Spain's Costa Blanca, lying between the cities of Alicante and Elche in the Valencian Community. It is the busiest airport in south-eastern Spain, handling large volumes of scheduled and low-cost traffic on a single long instrument runway, and is of interest to the simulator pilot chiefly as a busy controlled airport for airliner and general aviation operations rather than as a leisure VFR destination.
Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (ICAO: LEAL, IATA: ALC) serves the city of Alicante and the wider Costa Blanca region of the Valencian Community in eastern Spain. It is operated by Aena and is the largest airport in the Valencian Community, ranking as the fifth busiest in Spain and among the top 50 in Europe. For a simulator pilot it offers a realistic, high-traffic international airport experience with a single very long paved runway, full ILS approach capability and a busy mix of low-cost carrier and charter movements.
The airport lies about nine kilometres southwest of the city of Alicante and around ten kilometres east of the city of Elche, within Elche's municipal area, in the Valencian Community of eastern Spain. It sits close to the Mediterranean coast and handles both scheduled international services and domestic connections to destinations such as Madrid, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Bilbao and Santiago de Compostela.
The airport has a single physical runway, 10/28, aligned east-west. It is 9,798 feet long with a hard surface, lit for night operations, and equipped with an ILS on runway 10. There is no parallel or crosswind runway.
Air traffic services are provided on the following frequencies: Approach (APP) 118.8 MHz, ATIS 113.8 MHz, Ground (GND) 121.7 MHz, and Tower (TWR) 118.15 MHz. Runway 10 is served by an ILS approach, supporting instrument arrivals from the east.
The airport traces its origins to 1967, when it opened on 4 May under the name El Altet, taking its name from the El Altet area of Elche's countryside where it was built. It replaced the earlier La Rabassa aerodrome, which had served Alicante since 1936. The first commercial flight to land at the new airport was a Convair Metropolitan operated by Aviaco, and in November 1969 Iberia established regular connections to Madrid and Barcelona. Iberia remained the leading carrier at the airport until 2003, after which the low-cost carrier easyJet took the lead in 2004. Ryanair established a base at Alicante in November 2007 and has since grown into one of the airport's principal operators. The airport's name was changed in July 2013 to include Elche, reflecting the airport's location within Elche's comarca, and in 2021 the name was extended again to honour the Spanish poet and playwright Miguel Hernández, marking the 110th anniversary of his birth.
Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport remains a major international airport and is a base for easyJet, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Ryanair and Vueling, with Ryanair alone operating eighteen based aircraft as of summer 2025. Passenger traffic has grown substantially over the past decade, with the airport recording 18.38 million passengers in 2024, an increase of 16.8 percent over 2023. All commercial flight operations use the single Terminal NAT, which opened in March 2011 with a capacity of 20 million passengers a year. As a large, busy controlled airport, prior permission is required for general aviation and simulator pilots planning to operate there.
