General José Antonio Anzoategui International Airport

General José Antonio Anzoátegui International Airport (BLA) serves Barcelona and the adjacent resort city of Puerto La Cruz on Venezuela's northeastern Caribbean coast. Classified as a large airport by runway profile, it is the principal gateway for Anzoátegui state and a supporting node in the country's petroleum and tourism economies, channelling traffic toward the Orinoco heavy-oil belt, the José petrochemical complex and the Mochima National Park coastline. The field sits at 30 ft (9 m) elevation with a single asphalt runway long enough for narrow-body jet operations, allowing sustained service by Venezuelan carriers on domestic trunk routes to Caracas (CCS), Porlamar (PMV) and Maracaibo (MAR), plus occasional charter and regional international links. BLA's catchment includes the refinery towns of Puerto La Cruz and Guanta and the Margarita ferry terminals, giving it a mixed business-and-leisure profile that is unusual among Venezuela's second-tier fields. Historically the airport carried the name Simón Bolívar before its 1998 redesignation after independence-era general José Antonio Anzoátegui, and upgrades during the 2000s added apron capacity and a remodelled passenger terminal. Although sanctions and economic contraction have reduced international frequencies compared with Venezuela's pre-2015 peak, BLA remains a ranked large airport in Caribbean-South America tables by runway length and scheduled service, and continues to function as the aviation anchor for one of Venezuela's most industrialised coastal regions.