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Bantayan Airport (RPSB) is a small community airfield on Bantayan Island off the northern tip of Cebu, serving the municipality of Santa Fe in the Philippines. Reopened in December 2020 after a period of closure and rebuilding, it now offers a short hop from Mactan-Cebu, cutting a journey of several hours by road and ferry down to about 25 minutes by air. For the simulator pilot it is a compact, no-frills island strip with a single short runway and none of the infrastructure of a larger aerodrome.
Bantayan Airport is a small, publicly operated community airfield serving Bantayan Island in Cebu province, run by the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority. It sits in the municipality of Santa Fe and exists primarily to give the island quick air access to Mactan-Cebu, replacing a journey that otherwise takes five or six hours by bus and ferry. Its modest single-runway layout, lack of scheduled facilities and colourful history of closures and reopenings make it an interesting short VFR hop for a simulator pilot exploring the Visayas.
The airport lies in the barangays of Talisay and Okoy within Santa Fe, on Bantayan Island, roughly 3.9 nautical miles from the centre of Bantayan municipality itself. It is a community aerodrome without the traffic density of the larger Philippine airports, and the surrounding area is low-lying island terrain fringed by coastline, with no other airfields in the immediate vicinity.
Bantayan Airport has a single physical runway, 16/34, with a hard surface and a length of around 2,954 to 2,955 feet. There is no ILS or other instrument approach aid associated with the runway.
No communications frequencies are published for Bantayan Airport, and the field is not known to offer air traffic control or an air-ground radio service. Pilots should expect to operate on a self-announce or see-and-avoid basis in the absence of any listed frequency.
The runway sits close to the coast of Bantayan Island, and the small terminal building near the airport gate is a useful ground reference when routing towards the field visually.
The airport was classified by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) as a community airport, with a terminal shed erected in 2003 as part of an airport improvement programme. Its future was in doubt as early as 2013 when CAAP considered ceasing funding, though President Aquino's visit to the airport in February 2014 renewed interest in developing the site, and by 2015 initial work was reported on constructing new airports for both Bantayan and Camotes. Management of the airfield passed from CAAP to the Mactan-Cebu International Airport Authority (MCIAA) at the start of 2018, shortly after CAAP had suspended operations in November 2017 owing to the airstrip's dilapidated state. A terminal rebuild and runway extension project, begun in 2020, was completed by the end of that year, and the airport reopened for business on 27 November 2020.
Bantayan Airport has been operational again since April 2023, offering a much faster alternative to the sea and road route from Mactan Island. It remains a small, basic airstrip with minimal passenger facilities and no refuelling capability, and Skydive Santa Fe Cebu (also referenced as Skydive Greater Cebu) operates skydiving activity from the airfield. In February 2024 the Cebu provincial government announced plans for a runway expansion project intended to make the airport commercially viable for larger airline operations in future. Prior permission is required before operating into the field.
