Ciudad Real International Airport or CRIA , previously known as Central Airport CR, Don Quijote Airport and South Madrid Airport, is an international airport and long-storage facility, situated south of Ciudad Real in Spain. Constructed at a cost of €1.1 billion, it was opened in 2009, and became the first private international airport in Spain. Operations at the site ran for three years until April 2012, when its previous management company filed for bankruptcy and went into receivership, after the last flight operator, low-cost airline Vueling, withdrew its last route from the airport. It remained closed for seven years until finally reopening in September 2019, however without any scheduled passenger traffic. Facilities The airport features a single runway, long and wide, making it one of the longest in Spain and Europe. Its design was to enable the airport to accept all forms of commercial airliners, including the Airbus A380. The passenger terminal was designed so that it could process two million passengers a year, and a maximum of ten million passengers a year if additional modules were added, while its cargo facilities were designed to handle a maximum of 47,000 tonnes a year. One part of the airport was designed with facilities to cater for private flights and sport flights. The airport is linked by road to the A-41 motorway. As part of its planned expansion, the airport was to feature a maintenance area, a heliport and an industrial zone of over 8 km2. In addition, a long foot bridge was built to connect the terminal to the nearby Madrid–Seville high-speed rail line, towards a site for a railway station; construction of this transportation link was never started, though had such a project been undertaken and completed, it would have made Ciudad Real Airport the first in Spain to be linked to the AVE rail network, with travel times to the closest cities (Madrid and Córdoba) of 50–60 minutes. History Operations (2008–2012) Following its opening in 2009, the airport's first flights were to Palma de Mallorca, run by Air Berlin until it discontinued this service on 30 May 2010. Air Nostrum also operated flights to Barcelona, Gran Canaria, and briefly to Lanzarote. Ciudad Real Airport began handling international flights in June 2010, with its first international service launched by Ryanair. The airline service ran three flights per week from London Stansted, until its discontinuation on 11 November that year, having