Ciudad Real

38°51'23"N 003°58'12"W

runway: 10/28 - 4000x60m/13,123x197ft - concrete/asphalt

Ciudad Real Central Airport (Spanish: Aeropuerto Central Ciudad Real, also known as Don Quijote Airport and South Madrid Airport, ICAO: LERL) was an airfield 170 kilometers south of Madrid.
The airfield was built as the first privately financed airfield in Spain and opened on 19 December 2008.
Located adjacent to the A43 motorway and a short distance from the AP41 toll road, it was projected to have a connection to the Madrid–Seville high-speed rail line.
This woud make it the first Spanish airport to be linked to the AVE high-speed rail system.
It was also the first airport in Spain capable of handling the massive A-380 by design.
Air Nostrum was the first airline to operate from the airfield with domestic flights to Barcelona and Las Palmas.
International flights by Air Berlin were to follow a a month later, but ultimately began in April 2009 as domestic flights.
Part of the airport was for private and sport flight facilities.
It was planned to have a maintenance area, a heliport and an industrial zone of over 8 square kilometers.
The passenger terminal was designed to process 10 million passengers a year and its cargo facilities 47,000 tonnes a year.
Spanish regional carrier Air Nostrum flew from Barcelona El Prat Airport and Gran Canaria Airport during 2009.
Air Berlin served the Palma de Mallorca route, but ceased the service on 30 May 2010.
In June 2010, Ryanair began the first international service into the airport.
They were running three flights per week from London Stansted.
Spanish low-cost carrier Vueling served the airport with flights to Barcelona El Prat Airport and Palma de Mallorca Airport, but flights to the airport ceased on 29 October 2011.
Ryanair flights were operational until 11 November 2010.
By October that year most international routes were cancelled and the airport filed for bankruptcy with more than 300 million euro of debt.
Compared to the anticipated traffic of up to 10 million, actual passenger traffic was measured in the low thousands.
Low-cost carrier Ryanair for instance flew approximately 22,000 passengers into the airport during the six months they served the route.





Overview of the airfield in 2008 (Google Maps)






2009 approach chart of Ciudad Real Central Airport






2009 airfield map of Ciudad Real Central Airport


The airport remained open for another six months, the staff still being paid to deal with a handful of private arrivals.
It finally closed in April 2012, but even though it is now closed to air traffic, maintenance tasks still have to be carried out.
The 4,000 metre runway has to be continually painted with yellow crosses, so pilots flying over the airport will know they cannot land there.
As of 1 June 2012, the instrument approaches have been removed from all official documentation.
It is still not known how much the whole airport venture actually cost.
Estimates run from 356 million euros to one billion (€ 1,000,000,000) euros.
Spanish banks had been investing in too many 'White Elephants' like Ciudad Real.
Although officially this was all privately funded money, in 2012 the European Central Bank had to step in to safe Spanish banks from collapsing.







The airfield from the air when it was still open (Airoscar).






This photo of the control tower, along with several others shot right after the airfield closed, can be
viewed at Something Interesting.