Departure
92%
vs 95% ▼ 3
MY FS FLIGHTS
MY FS FLIGHTS
San Javier Airport (LELC) lies on the shore of the Mar Menor in the Region of Murcia, south-east Spain, and today serves as a Spanish Air and Space Force training base rather than a civil aerodrome. It once handled well over a million passengers a year before all scheduled traffic transferred to the new Región de Murcia International Airport at Corvera in January 2019, leaving San Javier as a purely military field of interest to sim pilots for its long twin runways and its links to the Spanish Air Force's aerobatic team.
San Javier Airport sits beside the Mar Menor lagoon in the Region of Murcia and is owned and operated by the Spanish Air and Space Force. It is home to the Academia General del Aire, the Spanish Air Force College, whose turboprop, piston and jet trainers use the field daily, and it is also strongly associated with the Patrulla Águila, the Spanish Air and Space Force's aerobatic demonstration team, which often practises over the nearby lagoon. For the sim pilot, the appeal lies in its substantial dual runway layout, military training atmosphere and its history as a busy holiday-charter airport before the opening of Corvera.
The airfield is located at San Javier, roughly 26 miles (42 km) south-east of the city of Murcia, close to the Mar Menor lagoon on Spain's Costa Calida. It shares the general area with the newer Región de Murcia International Airport at Corvera, which took over all scheduled civil traffic in January 2019.
San Javier has two parallel hard-surfaced runways, both lit. The main runway, 05R/23L, is 7,545 ft (asphalt), while the secondary runway, 05L/23R, is 5,107 ft (asphalt). There is no ILS at the field. Field elevation is 26 ft, at coordinates 37.775 N, 0.8125 W.
San Javier provides an air traffic service under the callsign San Javier, with Approach on 130.3 MHz, Ground on 121.6 MHz and Tower also on 130.3 MHz. The airport has no published ILS approach.
The Mar Menor lagoon immediately adjacent to the airfield is the principal visual landmark for locating San Javier, and it is also the area over which the Patrulla Águila aerobatic team is often seen practising.
The military air base at San Javier dates back to at least the early 1930s and occupies the northern end of the airport site; it has long served as home to the Academia General del Aire, the Spanish Air Force's officer and pilot training college, and to the Patrulla Águila aerobatic display team. Civil operations grew substantially over the decades, with passenger numbers rising from 88,608 in 1995 to over 1.18 million by 2012, and the airport invested around 60 million euros in new runway and terminal works between 2004 and 2011. Despite this investment, the Spanish government signed an agreement in November 2011 proposing to close the field to civilian traffic, and in November 2017 confirmed that Aena would instead manage a new airport at Corvera. San Javier's civil operations ceased on 14 January 2019, with the final commercial flight being a Ryanair service to Manchester, and all airline routes transferred to Región de Murcia International Airport the following day.
San Javier now functions solely as a military airfield under the Spanish Air and Space Force, used chiefly for training flights by the Academia General del Aire and as a base linked to the Patrulla Águila aerobatic team. As a military installation, prior permission is required for any visiting flight.