About
The aerodrome was authorised by a ministerial decision of 18 July 1938 and completed in August 1939, a few weeks before the Second World War. It received a hard runway in 1961 and a terminal in 1966. It lies between La Repentie and Laleu, on the north-western edge of the city.
Its runway (09/27) measures 2,213 × 45 m according to the official aeronautical information (older sources give 2,255 m). Run by the Chamber of Commerce until the end of 2018, the airport has been managed since 1 January 2019 by the Syndicat mixte des aéroports de La Rochelle-Île de Ré et Rochefort-Charente-Maritime, a joint body of local authorities. In 2025 it welcomed a record 303,669 passengers.
easyJet, Ryanair and Jet2 fly year-round to Lyon, Marseille and Marrakech, and seasonally (between March and November) to London-Gatwick, London-Stansted, Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Dublin, Cork, Brussels-Charleroi, Geneva and Porto. The nearest large airports are Nantes (137 km) and Bordeaux (191 km).
Visitor information
On the map
Sources: larochelle.aeroport.fr (presentation) · larochelle.aeroport.fr (airlines) · SIA eAIP (LFBH) · techno-science.net. The former version of this site said the airport opened in 1922 and belonged to the Chamber of Commerce: both were wrong or out of date and have been corrected. Checked 14 October 2026.