Seville Airport

Most airports in southern Spain are pure vacation airports. Seville is different. Of course, dozens of Ryanair and Vueling jets full of city-break travelers land here every day. But at the edge of the same runway, a gray, four-engine colossus occasionally rolls out of the hangar: a brand-new Airbus A400M on its way to a test flight. You won’t find this mix of everyday low-cost traffic and military aircraft in series production anywhere else in Europe.

From the Tablada airfield to San Pablo Airport

Seville is one of the places with the longest aviation history in Spain. In 1914, the first aircraft linking mainland Spain with Morocco landed on a makeshift airfield in Tablada, southwest of the old town. Just a year later, a military airfield was set up there, where pilots and observers were trained. In 1919, the first commercial connections to Madrid followed. Tablada remained primarily military for decades.

Today’s airport, however, is in a different place: on the San Pablo site in the northeast of the city. This was the location of a landing station for airships, used until 1936. From 1945, a new airport designed for transatlantic connections was built on this area. It still carries the nickname San Pablo after the site. In 1965, an instrument landing system was added.

The airport made its biggest leap ahead of the Expo 92 world’s fair. The architect Rafael Moneo designed a new terminal, which opened on July 31, 1991. Between 2019 and 2022, the Moneo terminal was converted and expanded: its capacity rose from about six to about ten million passengers a year.

One runway for everything

The layout is quickly explained: Seville has exactly one runway, 09/27. It is about 3,360 meters long, 45 meters wide and runs east–west. Everything goes through this one runway – scheduled flights, cargo, business aircraft and Airbus factory flights. For you as a spotter, that’s an advantage: if the wind holds steady and you’ve found the right spot, you hardly miss a movement.

The terminal is compact, many parking positions are on the open apron, and only a few have jet bridges. The Airbus facilities are separate from the passenger area, on their own plant grounds connected to the runway by taxiways.

Runway direction in use: 27 or 09?

As everywhere, aircraft in Seville take off and land into the wind. When it blows from the west, runway direction 27 is in use: aircraft come in from the east and take off to the west toward the city. With an east wind, the picture flips, and takeoffs and landings are toward 09. Because there is only one runway, the question of the right end matters especially here: approach shots only work where the aircraft are actually coming in.

Before your visit, check the current weather and look at a flight tracker to see which direction the latest landings came from. How to judge wind and runway direction reliably is explained in the article Understanding the runway direction in use at an airport. For the live situation on site, flight tracking with ADS-B also helps.

Airbus in San Pablo: where the A400M is built

The real reason Seville is on many spotters’ lists is the Airbus San Pablo plant. According to Airbus, the site leads its military transport aircraft activities. It houses the final assembly lines for the Airbus A400M and the Airbus C295, plus an international training center for military aircraft. The roots go back to the Spanish manufacturer CASA, which has since been absorbed into Airbus. The smaller transports CN-235 and C-212 Aviocar also come from this tradition.

The A400M final assembly hall is about 58,000 square meters and divided into seven modules. The major sections – fuselage sections, wings, tail – are built at various sites in Europe and brought to Seville. There, Airbus joins them, equips the aircraft and gets them into the air.

A few key facts about the program:

• In early 2007, final assembly of the first A400M began in Seville.
• On December 11, 2009, the type took off from here on its first flight.
• In the summer of 2013, the first aircraft went to the French Air Force.
• Customers include, besides the partner nations Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Belgium and Luxembourg, export customers such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Kazakhstan.

For you, that means: any A400M in service at Wunstorf, Orléans or Brize Norton made its first flight in Seville. If you already know the German A400Ms, the article on Wunstorf air base is worth a look – most of the German fleet is stationed there.

Spotting factory and test flights

Before an A400M or C295 goes to the customer, the aircraft completes a series of factory and acceptance flights in Seville. These flights are the highlight for spotters – and at the same time the hardest part. They are not in any schedule, often only happen in suitable weather, and can be postponed at short notice.

A few pointers help anyway:

• Registration and colors: New military transports often already wear the customer’s national markings or special test and factory registrations before handover. How manufacturers register their aircraft before delivery is explained in the article on test registrations.
• Flight tracking: Many factory flights are visible on ADS-B services, sometimes with striking loops over Andalusia. Typical patterns are described in the article on test and factory flights on the radar.
• Identifying the type reliably: The A400M, C295 and CN-235 differ clearly in size and number of engines. If you’re photographing military transports for the first time, the article Identifying military transports covers the key features – including how to tell them from the C-130 Hercules.

The 2015 crash

The plant’s history also includes a dark day. On May 9, 2015, a brand-new A400M with serial number MSN23 took off on its first test flight. Shortly after liftoff, the crew lost power on three of the four engines, and the aircraft crashed near the airport. Four Airbus crew members were killed, two survived with serious injuries. The investigations traced the accident to the fact that, after an error in the software installation, the engine control could not process important sensor data. Airbus and the customers revised their procedures afterward, and the program continued.

Maintenance at San Pablo Norte and at Ryanair

Besides final assembly, Airbus runs a second plant on the grounds: San Pablo Norte. It houses a service center for heavy maintenance, repairs and conversions of military aircraft. Contracts have included P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft. You rarely see from the outside what is parked there – all the more exciting when an unusual type rolls along the runway.

Ryanair also operates a maintenance facility in Seville. For spotters, this means that between the scheduled rotations, aircraft occasionally turn up that aren’t on the Seville schedule at all but come in for maintenance.

Scheduled traffic: Ryanair and Vueling in front

In passenger traffic, Seville is a classic low-cost airport. In 2025, according to Aena figures, just over 41 percent of passengers were on Ryanair and just under 29 percent on Vueling. Both use Seville as a base. Well behind them came Transavia France, Transavia from the Netherlands and Iberia Express.

The aircraft picture follows: Ryanair’s Boeing 737-800 and A320-family models such as Vueling’s Airbus A320 make up most of the movements. In total, just under 30 passenger airlines serve Seville, with destinations in Spain, western, northern and eastern Europe and North Africa. More than half of the traffic is international.

Other visitors include Air Europa, Binter, British Airways, Lufthansa, Eurowings, TAP, Turkish Airlines and Royal Air Maroc. The offering changes with the summer and winter schedules – the current arrivals boards show best which airline comes how often. According to Aena data, the most important domestic route is the one to Barcelona Airport; abroad, London Gatwick was recently far ahead.

Growth at record levels

The numbers show how strongly Seville has grown in recent years. In 2005, the airport handled about 3.5 million passengers, in 2019 about 7.5 million. After the slump to roughly 2.3 million in the pandemic year 2020, it climbed steeply. In 2024, just over 9 million passengers were counted; 2025, with about 9.67 million, was the highest figure so far. On top of that came just over 73,000 aircraft movements and about 11,700 tons of cargo.

With the terminal designed for a capacity of about ten million passengers a year, the airport is slowly reaching its limit. For you, the growth mainly means: more movements per hour and more variety among the airlines.

Getting there and spotting on site

The airport is about ten kilometers northeast of the city center. By car, you reach it via the A-4 motorway, which connects Seville with Córdoba and Madrid. Without a car, the Airport Express of the city transit company TUSSAM is the easiest choice: the bus runs from the Plaza de Armas bus station via the long-distance train station Santa Justa to the terminal and takes about 35 to 40 minutes. The first bus leaves in the morning at around 4:30 a.m.; tickets are sold on the bus. Check schedule and prices before your trip.

We didn’t find an official observation deck or visitors’ park like those in Germany during our research. Spotters therefore use publicly accessible paths and roads around the airport grounds. Specific locations keep changing because of construction and closures – the best approach is to ask the community where it’s currently good to stand.

Seville compared

For long-haul and widebody jets in Spain, Madrid-Barajas Airport is the first address; for dense European and intercontinental traffic, Barcelona Airport. In the south, Málaga Airport is much bigger and more touristy, and on the islands leisure traffic dominates, as at Palma de Mallorca Airport. Seville, by contrast, scores with its industrial profile.

You’ll find the counterpart in France: at Toulouse-Blagnac Airport, Airbus assembles the civil widebody jets; tips are in the article Plane spotting at Toulouse-Blagnac. If you want to dig deeper into military aviation in Spain, plan a detour to the Museo del Aire in Madrid.

Verdict

Seville Airport is neither a hub nor a long-haul destination – but it has something hardly any other airport in Europe offers: brand-new military transports flying their first flights right next to low-cost traffic. With only one runway, plenty of sun and growing traffic, it’s a rewarding destination if you want to combine a city break with a few hours of spotting.

You still need to plan: runway direction, heat and the unplannable factory flights decide whether you go home with an A400M on your memory card or “only” with 737s and A320s.