August 20, 2024
Malaga Airport (IATA code: AGP) is the main airport serving the Costa del Sol. It is not a very big airport, which is a big advantage in terms of ease of use; it is quite unlikely to get lost or to end up in the wrong gate in Malaga Airport. It is cute, well maintained and very well connected to the city – by train, bus, taxi, uber or bolt. Come see a few higlhights, including Malaga’s airport board of arrivals and departures, and a closer look at the ways to get to and from the airport, plus everything there is to know about parking there! 😉
Table of Contents
Malaga Airport Arrivals and Departures
Click on either departures or arrivals in the board below to switch between flights departing from or arriving in Malaga Airport. The table shows the flights that are closest in time to now; you can also explore the most recent flights and the next ones (including flights scheduled for tomorrow and beyond). This information is provided by Avionio.com.
How early should I arrive at Malaga airport?
Not only in this airport, but in all airports in Spain, you should arrive 3 hours before flight time for international flights, and 2 hours before for domestic or Schengen area flights, according to Aena, the state- owned company that manages the Spanish airports.
This amount of time is needed not so much because the airport of Malaga is big or busy; I believe it is because there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. There are the people handling thousands of luggage and transporting them in and out airplanes, for instance. I think like this: giving them the proper amount of time to work increases the chances that my luggage will arrive with me; so I follow the guidelines.
I’ve never lost a flight, but my luggage was lost twice; both times on flights with connections shorter than 2 hours – see the correlation? – which makes me think that the middle airport had a short time to do the necessary luggage transfers and failed.
You’ll get you check-in / luggage drop done fast, and then you have time to wander around a bit before going to security; think of it as one more place you are visiting in Malaga! 🙂 The hours fly by; so much to see and to do, it feels like a walk in the mall. And in Malaga Airport, it is also a last opportunity to get a little something for friends and family back home.
Is Malaga airport very busy?
Malaga airport is busy during summer, Christmas, and the Holy Week – as is the Costa del Sol in general. In other times of the year, it is usually not busy. Sometimes there are huge lines to pass security, but there are also many security booths working simultaneously, so even a long line goes relatively fast.
Are there different terminals at Malaga Airport?
Yes, there are 5. One deals with private flights, one with cargo transportation and 3 with regular commercial airlines. Two of these (terminals 2 and 3) operate regularly, and the third one (Terminal 1) opens when there is extra need.
Is Malaga airport a big airport?
No. It is a cute pocket-airport (in my opinion). Everybody (national, Schengen or international flights) arrives in the same area, at the ground level, and all check-ins / luggage drop-offs happen on the floor above it. From the luggage drop-off area, you can already see the security area, but there is plenty of signaling to bring you there with extra ease.
Location of Malaga Airport
If you are already in Malaga (city or province) and want to check your alternatives to reach the airport, click on directions on the Google Maps below, and it will show you the means of transportation available to get you there. You can even choose at what time you want to arrive at the airport for better planning!
If you are not in Malaga yet, you can use it anyway, to see the different alternatives to reach your hotel or vacation rental from the airport.
Transportation to and from Malaga Airport
There are several options to get to and from the airport, and they are all conveniently located close to both arrival and departure terminals. The best option will depend on your preferences and the amount of luggage you have. If the taxi price is too high, you can always consider a blend of train + taxi or bus + taxi, which can cut this cost by half. Let’s take a look:
Trains to and from Malaga Airport
The airport has its own train station, which makes this means of transportation very convenient if your hotel or vacation rental is also close to one. The train ticket is much cheaper than a taxi – it costs € 2,70 to go to or from the Airport to Fuengirola, the furthest train station on this line, less to or from closer stations.
The train runs from around 5:30 am to a bit past midnight, with intervals of 20 minutes (most common) to 35 minutes and there are more trains during weekdays than during weekends. To check the precise times, Renfe, the train company, has a interactive timetable on their page, where you can input your date and stations and they show the times of trains for that date. 🙂 You can also check the timetable on their app, and the expected times are usually met.
I’ve written about this station on Train Stations in Malaga, where I added two videos – one showing the way from the arrivals terminal to the train station and another from the station to arrivals. I’ll not rewrite all the details as you can check there, but I’ll copy the videos here:
Easy peasy, right?
Related post:
Train stations in Malaga – Aeropuerto
Bus
My rule of thumb for public transportation in the Costa del Sol is simple: if you can choose between the train and the bus, choose the train. Still, depending on where you are going to stay, the bus may be more convenient. If that is the case, check on the google maps under Location of Malaga Airport (a title in this post) the bus lines that get you there.
The problem with the buses is that, at least for the buses of Consorcio Malaga (green or dark blue buses), their schedule is unpredictable – I consider the Consorcio times to be in the fiction category. I have better hopes for Avanza (red buses), but I have not used them enough to say for sure.
In any case, here are the links for Consorcio Malaga and Avanza schedule pages. I would not recommend going to the airport by bus – unless you want to extend your stay in Malaga… Going from the airport by bus, though, is more doable, particularly if you are very, very patient and going to either Marbella or Estepona, where the trains don’t reach and the taxis would be expensive. I’ve some saving tips for these scenarios, mixing buses, trains and taxis.
Taxi, transfers, Uber and Bolt
Uber and Bolt work well in Malaga, but I actually prefer the taxis. I find taxis to be on the same price range or cheaper than Uber/Bolt and, in my experience, reliable. My main problem with Uber is that they just show how long the driver is going to take to get to the location after you have already paid, so the wait can be a bit long, and cancelling is not free. To avoid headaches, I prefer the taxis anytime there is a taxi stand nearby, which is the case in Malaga Airport.
The transfers are like high-end taxis, which you can book ahead, and even choose larger car sizes or inform of any special needs of your group, so they can come prepared, for instance, to accommodate a wheelchair in the car. It can be a fantastic solution if there are people with special mobility needs coming into the group. The transfers are comfortable and reliable, but their prices are higher than those of regular taxis.
A taxi to or from Torremolinos is quite affordable, as the city is so close; it should cost around € 15; Benalmadena, some € 25. I have included a list of approximate prices for day and night taxi fares to several hotels in Taxis from Malaga Airport, so you can check there. 😉 The further one gets from the airport, the more it makes sense to mix train and taxis, as the prices get high.
Related post:
Taxis from Malaga Airport
Car Rental
Renting a car is a good idea if you plan to travel to multiple towns during your stay in Spain, and you’ll be glad to know that the airport is by far the best place to do the renting. I mean, the best is to do it online, but book pick-up and drop-off of the car in the airport, both for convenience and because the prices are much lower when the airport is the chosen location! I explain all about it in Stress-free car rental in Malaga. 😉
Parking in Malaga Airport
Good luck with that… there are 4 places to park (P1, P2 and Arrivals car park, in the image below, plus a parking for longer stays, not shown in this image) and 1 area to drop people off at the airport (passenger unloading area, which is open now). We’ll see them ahead as if we were approaching the airport by car (with Google Maps)!
So, you are going to the airport through MA-23, when you reach the large roundabout called South Access (see image above). Take the second exit – so far, so good! – and soon you’ll see the large sign below, that you’ll barely be able to read because there is too much information, so better do it now:
Even if you manage to read it, it is not the most understandable of information, is it? I’ll translate it to match the previous image: if you follow car rental, you’ll reach P2; ‘P General’ will take you to P1; ‘P llegadas’ will take you to Arrivals car park. Todas direcciones means ‘all directions’, which though reassuring in the first moment, is in fact rather meaningless.
‘P Express’ is the drop off area / passenger unloading area; P VIP eventually will get you to the last lane, ‘Excepto autorizados‘, which means only authorized vehicles can use that lane; it is for the ‘P VIP’ and for the transfers, taxis, Ubers and tour buses (not the normal buses).
A better translation: you are (probably) not authorized to use the right lane; stay in the middle lane if you want to drop off someone, and go to the left lane if you want to park for a while. We will start with the middle lane, that leads to the drop off area:
P Express / Passenger unloading area
The middle lane will soon bifurcate. 😛
Stay on the right side of the bifurcation if you want to reach the P Express, where you are supposed to simply drop off someone, wave goodbye (maybe a kiss?) and leave. This Express Parking is free for the first 10 minutes; if you stay longer, it costs € 7 per hour. It is constantly full and has a long line, so the odds are not in our favor here.
You see above the first barrier to enter the P Express, and it may lead you to think that you would be dropping someone very conveniently, right in front of the entrance of the departure area of the airport. Let me clarify with the next image:
Nope, not really. That very nice place to drop someone off is just for the authorized – VIP, taxis and similar – the rest of us mortals need to move on, separated by a barrier. Turn the image above around and you’ll find the real entrance to the Express Parking; by the time you reach there, a good part of the free 10 minutes is gone. It used to be 15, you know? I wonder why they cut it shorter…
P VIP and long stay
Have you ever wondered what makes a VIP? Me too! It’s payment, not surprisingly. Reaching the VIP area is easy – just keep on the right lane, the one that says ‘excepto autorizados‘, all the way. You’ll soon reach a barrier, this one with a person, not a gate. This person will verify that you have, indeed, purchased the VIP ticket; you can leave your car there and their driver will go park it (in the P2 parking lot, according to that previous AENA image). If you want to buy the VIP parking ticket, you can do it here; I don’t know if it is possible to buy on spot. Online, the minimum purchase is for 8 hours.
This is one of the airport’s solutions for those who want to leave their car when they are traveling; it is not available for short stays, as in when you are picking up someone from the airport. There are several other private parking companies around the airport, for the same purpose; we won’t talk about these here because I never used their services, but it is good that you know about that possibility.
There is also the non-VIP long stay car park, far far away from the airport:
You reach it (eventually) by taking the first exit at the South Access roundabout; for all other parking lots, take the second. There is a shuttle to get you back to the airport, but it is not immediate; you may have to wait a few minutes for the bus. I did a comparison online, and this parking cost a little bit more than half of the VIP price. If you want to check prices, here is the link to AENA’s page that lets you book parking in the airport.
P Llegadas / Arrivals car park
Remember the first barrier right after the roundabout, that pointed ‘P Llegadas’ to the left? I’ll repeat it here:
Well, that is the last information you’ll have about ‘P Llegadas’. From now on, it will be called ‘P Preferente’ (preferential) by the signalizations. And you can either stay in the left lane or in the middle one to get there. The middle one is actually better. It is going to bifurcate soon ahead; keep left on the bifurcation, which will become the right side of the road below.
Keep in the right lane, because soon you won’t be able to change lanes.
Below is the entrance to the Arrivals car park, which is right in between the arrivals area and the Airport Train Station. A great location if you are there to pick up someone. I’ve never used it because I always end up in the left lane. Writing this post was the first time I noticed the change in name, from Llegadas (arrivals) to Preferente (preferential); as I don’t fit any preferential criteria, I never went there!
I think the preferential issue is related to pre-payment (who would have guessed?); you are preferential if you booked to park there. Like the VIP, this one can be booked online for a minimum of 8 hours, but I think it accepts payment on spot too, for shorter periods.
Out of curiosity, I did a quote for booking each of the Malaga airport parking lots for the same dates and times (60 hours, two and a half days in August). Here are the results:
Ha! The arrivals parking is more expensive than the VIP!!! Now that is unexpected. I found a review on google about this parking lot that I want to share with you, because I couldn’t put it better:
P2 / Car rental
You should follow this way if you have rented a car and are about to deliver it. Take the second exit from the South Access roundabout, then keep left. You’ll find these signs, the same we have seen for the Arrivals car park. Keep left.
Continue to the left. You’ll get here:
You can’t really get it wrong from here, because there is no other way to go. Just continue until you find the colorful entrance below, with logos of all rental companies available in the airport:
P1 / P General
Follow the same instructions as for the P2 / rental cars above, just don’t enter the colorful entrance; continue ahead a while further, until you almost reach the end of this long, long, long parking building. Here is our entrance:
Unfortunately, there is no shuttle bus from the P1 parking lot.
When I travel, I go to the airport by taxi (because I live in Benalmadena); when I go to take pictures, it is always by train. But when I go pick up or drop people in the airport, which is usually either my parents or Hubby’s parents, we go by car and have to park there. We park in the P1 parking, we have never booked it ahead and used to walk (a lot) to get to the airport itself.
But we are now experts in this P1 parking lot, so let me share a pro tip: we get in and go straight to the last floor, where we end up besides the top of the P2 parking, which happens to be the Express Parking / drop off area. We pay less than what we would have paid just to drop someone; because it is on the same level as the departures floor, it is much closer to where the person being dropped needs to go, and we all walk a lot less, with the added advantage that I can still kiss my mum a lot before it is her time to fly!
Conclusion
The Airport of Malaga reflects the Costa del Sol itself in several ways: cute, mostly well-kept and hard to park; it is also full of people when the Costa is full and less so in the off-season. I hope this post got you to know the airport a bit better (I know it did for me!) and will make your travel decisions a bit easier. I wish you a great time in the Costa del Sol, a great parking spot and a safe flight!
Next: Malaga Fair 2024: the ultimate party!
