Zaragoza Airport ( Aragonese and es, Aeropuerto de Zaragoza; ) is an international

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surfa ...

near

Zaragoza Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...

Aragón Aragon ( , ; Spanish and an, Aragón ; ca, Aragó ) is an autonomous communities of Spain, autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. In northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises th ...

Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , i ...

. It is located west of Zaragoza, west of

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, and northeast of

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the Largest cities of the Europ ...

. In addition to serving as a major cargo airport it is also a commercial airport and the home of the

Spanish Air and Space Force , colours = , colours_label = , march = Spanish Air and Space Force Anthem , mascot = , anniversaries = 10 December , equipment ...

15th Group.

History

During the Cold War, the

United States Air Force The United States Air Force (USAF) is the Aerial warfare, air military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part ...

(USAF) used the facility as

Zaragoza Air Base Zaragoza Air Base is a base of the Spanish Air and Space Force located near Zaragoza, Spain. It is located west of Zaragoza, west of Barcelona, and northeast of Madrid. It shares infrastructure with the Zaragoza Airport. in the past, Zaragoza ...

. The construction work on Zaragoza Airport began in September 1954 with the enlargement and improvement of the existing Spanish Air Force Base located there.

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

engineers upgraded the facility for temporary or intermediate use as a war standby base. The first U.S. construction project included strengthening the existing runway and adding overruns at each end. Work on a new

concrete Concrete is a composite material composed of fine and coarse aggregate bonded together with a fluid cement (cement paste) that hardens (cures) over time. Concrete is the second-most-used substance in the world after water, and is the most wid ...

runway, , with overruns at each end, began in 1956 and was completed in 1958. Zaragoza was one of three major USAF Cold War airbases in Spain, the others being

Torrejón Air Base Torrejón Air Base (Base Aérea de Torrejón de Ardoz) is both a major Spanish Air and Space Force base and the co-located Madrid–Torrejón Airport, a secondary civilian airport for the city and metropolitan area of Madrid, east-northeast of t ...

near

and

Morón Air Base Morón Air Base is located at in southern Spain, approximately southeast of the city of Seville. The base gets its name from the nearby town of Morón de la Frontera while is located inside Arahal municipality territory. Currently the bas ...

near

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

. The airport was also used by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

as a contingency landing site for the

Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program ...

in the case of a

Transoceanic Abort Landing Space Shuttle abort modes were procedures by which the nominal launch of the NASA Space Shuttle could be terminated. A pad abort occurred after ignition of the shuttle's main engines but prior to liftoff. An abort during ascent that would result ...

(TAL). Zaragoza was chosen as a NASA Space Shuttle TAL site due to its long runway, which needs be longer than 7,500 feet, and its pleasant weather. The base also has a military-grade navigation system called a

TACAN A tactical air navigation system, commonly referred to by the acronym TACAN, is a navigation system used by military aircraft. It provides the user with bearing and distance (slant-range or hypotenuse) to a ground or ship-borne station. It is a mor ...

—"Tactical Air Navigation"—that can adapt to the special guidance devices NASA used with its shuttles.

Airlines and destinations

Passenger

Cargo

Statistics

Access

Currently, the airport is connected to the city center by a bus line (501), which goes from the Puerta del Carmen square, downtown, to the airport, also stopping at the city's main railway station: Zaragoza-Delicias. The station is an important hub for long-distance trains,

AVE ''Alta Velocidad Española'' (''AVE'') is a service of high-speed rail in Spain operated by Renfe, the Spanish national railway company, at speeds of up to . As of December 2021, the Spanish high-speed rail network, on part of which the AVE s ...

high-speed trains and the commuter line of Cercanías Zaragoza, which takes passengers underground through the city and overground in the metropolitan area.

References

External links

* * * * {{authority control Airports in Aragon Buildings and structures in Zaragoza Transport in Zaragoza Space Shuttle Emergency Landing Sites