Rabat-Salé Airport

Rabat–Salé Airport is the principal airport serving the administrative capital of Morocco, Rabat, and the adjacent city of Salé, handling roughly 1 million passengers annually. Though considerably smaller than Casablanca's Mohammed V International Airport (CMN) 85 km (53 mi) to the south, RBA plays an outsized diplomatic and political role as the airport of choice for heads of state visiting Morocco and for much of the diplomatic corps, embassy, and royal-court traffic generated by Rabat's status as the seat of government of the Kingdom of Morocco. The Royal Moroccan Air Force maintains significant facilities at the airport and uses it as the base for VIP and state aircraft. RBA is served primarily by Royal Air Maroc (RAM) subsidiary Air Arabia Maroc, Ryanair, Transavia France, easyJet, TUI fly Belgium, and Vueling, with European service concentrated on Paris, Brussels, Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, and London. Flag carrier RAM itself operates from RBA on more limited schedules than from CMN, with the airline's main Moroccan hub remaining Casablanca. Seasonal charter and umrah flights to Jeddah and Medina provide additional capacity. A single runway, 04/22, measures 11,811 ft (3,600 m) — generously sized relative to current commercial traffic, reflecting the airport's military history and VIP-operations capacity requirements. The commercial passenger terminal is modest in scale with two jet bridges. RBA sits 9 km (5.6 mi) northeast of Rabat city center in the Salé commune, on the north bank of the Bou Regreg river across from the Rabat kasbah. The airport is one of the closest major airports to a national capital city center in Africa.