It’s a holidaymaker’s worst nightmare – booking a cheap flight and arriving at your destination, only to find you are over 100 miles away from the city you intended to visit and now have to pay a huge taxi fare to get there.
There are a number of airports that have incorporated the city into their name, despite being a substantial distance away.
Among them is Paris Vatry Airport, which lies a whopping 131 miles from the centre of the French capital. It takes over two hours to reach the city by car from the air hub.
Ryanair once marketed it as an ideal getaway to the city and Disneyland Paris.
The airport is so far from Paris that its distance is about 10 miles more than that existing between London and Birmingham.
Officially titled Chalons Vatry Airport, the airport is often branded as Paris Vatry Airport, including on its official website. It has a vague catchphrase at the top of the site, reading “so close, so fast”, with users having to scroll down to find out where it is actually found.
A disgruntled X (formerly known as Twitter) user said: “How can you call it a Paris airport when the airport is 200km away from Paris?”
One tourist took to Tripadvisor for help in 2020 after booking a flight before realising how far the airport is from central Paris. They wrote: “I booked non refundable flights not realising this airport is so far away from Paris. How can I get there from Paris Gare du Nord?”
One user replied, saying: “It is not just far away from Paris – it is in the middle of nowhere; I didn’t even know there were commercial flights operating from there.
“There are shuttle buses from Vatry to Chalons and Reims. I imagine they are coordinated with flight times. I imagine that you will find more and faster trains from Paris to Reims than to Chalons, but it’s up to you to verify that. And the trains will be from Paris-Est instead of Paris-Nord, but those two stations are quite close to each other.”
Another wrote: “How much did you spend on tickets? I’d be tossing them out the window and buying new ones out of an actual Paris airport.”
A third user agreed, adding: “The train + shuttle will cost you more than plane tickets. Book a new one, but before making another mistake tell us what your plans are.”
Despite its distance from Paris, the airport does have a fascinating history. Construction began in 1953 in order to boost NATO’s air power problems during the Cold War. When France withdrew from the integrated NATO military structure in 1967, the Americans left the air base and it was used as a French training base until 2000.
Today, it is open to both international heavy cargo and passenger planes, as well as being a training airport for airlines including Air France and British Airways.
Ryanair continues to schedule regular flights from Paris-Vatry Airport to destinations including Marrakesh and Porto. There are also holiday flights to hotspots including Austria, Malta, Cyprus and Italy.
This is not the only example of such an airport. Oslo-Torp Airport is located 73 miles from Norway’s capital, leading its visitors to having to undertake an hour and 28 minute-journey to reach the Norwegian capital.
Similarly, despite sounding as though it is right in the heart of the German city, Munich West Airport is in fact located in the town of Memmingen, on the edge of Bavaria, 70 miles from Munich. Factor in an extra one hour and 17 minutes transfer time if you have plans in the city when you arrive.
