The Air Nostrum ATR-72-600 turboprop landing today at La Seu d’Urgell-Andorra airport may be small news in the international aviation news scene, but I felt compelled to write a note about it for a number of reasons.

First of all, this is an airport that is dear to me personally since it was here there I flew on a light aircraft for the first time - a panoramic air tour of the Pyrenees - shortly after turning 18.

But also because this flight is the culmination of nearly four decades of struggle to recover regular air connections, not just for this part of the Catalan Pyrenees, but also for the neighbouring Principality of Andorra.

This is one of the few countries in the world that lack and airport in its territory. I had the chance to compile a list of such countries for CNN back in 2017 “What happens when a country's too small for an airport?”. The answer, in this case, has been: you try to reach some agreement with the neighbouring country with the airport closest to you.

It is not the first time that La Seu d’Urgell has regular air service, between 1983 and 1984, Aviaco, a Spanish domestic airline that was later absorbed into Iberia, operated a regular service, up to thrice daily, to Barcelona using Fokker 27 aircraft.

This route never really took hold. On one hand it appears to have suffered from constant reliability problems, since the airport was not, back then, equipped for instrumental landings, an issue in the often challenging weather conditions in the area. At the same time, the improvement of road links between Barcelona and the Pyrenees in he 1980s, such as the inauguration of the Cadí Tunnel, diminished the appeal of the air link.

During the 1990s there were several projects to reactivate the airport, that during these 37 years has handled mostly general aviation and some emergency and rescue flights, but these attempts did not result in any return of regular airlines.

It has been in the last decade, after an agreement was reached between the Andorran, Catalan and Spanish governments to finance an upgrade of the facilities and to share the costs of operating and promoting the airport that regular flights became again a real possibility.

Several startup airline projects catering for the Andorran traffic have since sprung, but these also failed to materialize so far. In the meantime the airport has been receiving some occasional charter flights, including some VIP ones, such as when Sir Elton John visited on a private flight or the Portuguese national football team arrived in a couple of specially chartered airplane.

More recently, Canaryfly, an airline from the Canary Islands, was seen operating an ATR-72 on some charter flights on behalf of “virtual carrier” Andorra Airlines.

But it has finally been Air Nostrum (a Spanish regional airline that operates on many routes as an Iberia franchisee) that has been the first to re-launch regular flights out La Seu through a PSO route scheme funded by the Andorran government. The new route will operate to Madrid daily. Traffic is expected to include both connection traffic for Madrid-Barajas (Iberia’s hub) and leisure travellers heading for the major tourist destination that is Andorra, although the surrounding areas of the Catalan Pyrenees are also going to benefit from the increased connectivity.

Other potential markets that have been touted for future route launches include both Portugal (which has a large community in Andorra) and the UK (a major ski travel market).

Improvements in land communications in the 80s and 90s also meant that the short air hop to Barcelona lost its raison-d’etre.

But the Andorrans didn’t give up, the idea to have an airport serving the country and also bringing in more visitors, mainly skiers to its slopes, was certainly attractive. There were several projects and studies to evaluate options to make the airport operative again. And also there have been several attempts to have an “Andorran airline”, none of them very successful so far, although limited mostly to charters.

Several startups were presented but none really got anywhere. More recently an airline from the Canary Islands operated some flights as “Air Andorra”, but it hasn’t been until the set up of PSO routes that the airport has recovered regular service. Air Nostrum is operating the service …weekly to Madrid-Barajas.

La Seu-Andorra airport is also another instance of a phenomenon that I touched upon recently in this other CNN article: airports that are international in the very literal sense of the word, because they are right on or very close to an international border and are managed or accessible from more than one country at the same time.

Not a single inch of La Seu airport is within Andorran territory, but given the interest of Andorran authorities to have some sort of air connectivity and to pay to its use, there is Andorran involvement in its operation. Also, a project recently unveiled to build a cable car across the mountains linking the airport directly to the commercial downtown of the principality, would give it an additional direct cross border access.

La Seu-Andorra airport is part of the network of Aeroports de Catalunya (“Airports of Catalonia”), an airport management firm owned by the government of Catalonia that manages also Lleida-Alguaire, a commercial but also, mostly, industrial and storage airport, that I featured on this CNN piece about aircraft storage during the COVID pandemic.

Mentioning this because, last year, I had the pleasure to interview the director of Airports of Catalonia, Jordi Candela, on the Allplane podcast and learned quite a lot about the business of regional and industrial airports. La Seu-Andorra features, of course, prominently in our chat. Check it out there!

Tiny Andorra gets (back) regular air links