7

When travelling to North America, I am usually quite stressed when arriving in a large airport serving a huge city, so I like to seek out flights arriving in more peaceful settings.

Condor seasonally flies from Frankfurt to Whitehorse International Airport, an airport with (2014) 22,879 movements serving a town of around 25k people.

Air Saint Pierre seasonally flies from Paris CDG to Saint-Pierre Airport, serving Saint Pierre with less than 6k inhabitants.

What is the smallest destination in the Americas I can fly to directly from Europe? For smallest, I may consider either the size of the airport (by number of travellers, aircraft movements, or otherwise) or the population of the city/area it serves. I consider only regularly scheduled flights, seasonal is fine, but not charters. Islands geographically associated with the Americas count, except Greenland (because Kangerlussuaq is mostly a hub for transferring to smaller flights, and Greenland has, most of the time, only flights from Europe).

Is any destination smaller than Saint Pierre to which I can fly non-stop from Europe?

Improve this question
14
  • As a more practical consideration, would you consider the size of the immigration/customs checkpoint? I can think of a couple of airports in good sized cities but with very tiny immigration areas.
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 21:14
  • 4
    I will be exceptionally surprised if St Pierre isn't the smallest. It's a ridiculously small airport that wouldn't normally warrant anything bigger than a regional flight.
    – DJClayworth
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 21:26
  • @MichaelHampton Not sure. The flight from Paris to Saint Pierre is domestic :)
    – gerrit
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 21:35
  • @MichaelHampton Stanley is smaller, but not really in the Americas. But maybe some other islands associated with Europe?
    – gerrit
    Commented Jan 15, 2020 at 21:37
  • 2
    @ChrisH That's not a direct flight then... by that reasoning I can fly from Værøy to Page as two tiny airports... :)
    – gerrit
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 10:33

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
4

Samaná El Catey International Airport (AZS) only has 858 aircraft movements a year, but still has seasonal transatlantic flights to Frankfurt operated by Condor.

San Salvador Airport in the Bahamas (ZSA) has 896 movements a year. It has seasonal flights to Paris-Orly operated by Air Caraïbes. It is on San Salvador Island which has a population of 930.

Picture of the latter seem to indicate a pretty relaxed airport.

For both, that's an average of less than 9 aircraft per week.

Improve this answer
4

I googled unusual transatlantic flights and got this USA Today article from 2018 so no telling if all the flights are still flying...

Most entries had a big airport at one end or the other but this one stood out to me:

Providence, Rhode Island (PVD) to Ponta Delgada, Azores (PDL) on Azores Air. It's summer-seasonal.

Improve this answer
3
  • 1
    Azores is only half transatlantic though :)
    – gerrit
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 8:38
  • 3
    Unfortunately the USA Today article is apparently not available from the European Union (it redirects me to "welcome to our European Union experience").
    – gerrit
    Commented Jan 16, 2020 at 15:28
  • @gerrit - sure, Azores isn't fully transatlantic. But from there there are seasonal flights to (per Wikipedia) Faro or Bilbao, which aren't particularly large.
    – Michael Lugo
    Commented Feb 22 at 15:22

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .