How far is your resort from Palma airport?

How far is Palma airport from the resorts?

Palma airport sits 8 km east of Palma city centre, and from there nearly every resort on Mallorca is between 15 and 75 minutes away. The shortest run we drive is Playa de Palma, 6 km and 12 to 18 minutes. The longest is Cala Mesquida in the far northeast, 82 km and 65 to 75 minutes. Everything else falls in between, and the table further down has the exact figure for all 41 destinations we cover, with the road each transfer uses and a fixed price per car.

One thing is worth saying up front, because it trips people up when they compare hotels. On Mallorca, distance and time do not track each other neatly. Peguera is 28 km from the airport and takes 35 to 40 minutes. Inca is 35 km away and takes 30 to 40. The difference is the road. A straight motorway run eats kilometres far faster than the last stretch of a coast road with three roundabouts and a resort high street at the end of it. We drive both of those routes every week, and Peguera is the one that catches first-time visitors out, because the kilometres promise a shorter ride than the road delivers.

Where is Palma airport exactly, and how do you leave it?

PMI stands at Son Sant Joan, 8 km east of Palma along the bay, and every transfer leaves on the same road: the Ma-19. Aena runs a single terminal with four boarding modules, A to D, so wherever in Europe you flew from you come down into the same arrivals hall. Our drivers wait there with a name board, between columns 3 and 4, in front of the Paul Express Coffee & Bakery. From the kerb outside, the car is on the motorway in about two minutes.

That first road then sorts the island out for you. Go west on the Ma-19 and you reach Palma’s ring road, the Ma-20, which hands you to the Ma-1 for Calvià, the Ma-11 for the Sóller tunnel, or the Ma-13 for the north. Go east on the Ma-19 and you simply stay on it, through Llucmajor and Campos, all the way to the southeast. The Ma-15 for the east coast breaks off inland and runs through Manacor. Those five roads, plus a handful of secondary ones at the end, cover every route in the table below. They are the roads we live on: after eight-plus seasons a driver knows which of them is already backing up before any map says so.

What is the distance and transfer time to each destination?

Here is the full list, grouped into the six zones the island really splits into. Distances are driving kilometres from the terminal, not straight lines, and the times are normal daytime conditions with no incident on the road.

Once you know the kilometres, two other studies put numbers on them: what a taxi from Palma Airport costs on the official 2026 tariff, and which buses leave the airport and which resorts they reach.

Which motorway will your transfer use?

Five roads carry almost all airport traffic on Mallorca, and knowing which one is yours tells you most of what you need about the ride.

Ma-19, the Autopista de Llevant. The airport’s own motorway. It links PMI with Palma in one direction and with Llucmajor, Campos, Santanyí and the southeast calas in the other. If you are heading to Cala d’Or, Porto Petro or Colònia de Sant Jordi, you are on it for most of the trip.

Ma-1, the Autopista de Ponent. West from Palma towards Calvià and Andratx: Magaluf, Palmanova, Santa Ponsa, Peguera and on to Port d’Andratx. Short distances and motorway nearly the whole way, which is why the southwest has the cheapest transfers on the island.

Ma-13, the Autopista d’Inca. The central spine, from Palma to Inca and Sa Pobla and out to the bay of Alcúdia. Everything in the north uses it: Alcúdia, Port d’Alcúdia, Playa de Muro, Can Picafort, Pollença and Port de Pollença.

Ma-15, Palma to Manacor and Capdepera. This one is not motorway for its whole length, and that is exactly why the east coast times look long next to the kilometres. It carries Sa Coma, Cala Millor, Porto Cristo and the long haul out to Cala Ratjada.

Ma-11, Palma to Sóller. The mountain road, and the only one here with a tunnel. The Sóller tunnel lost its toll in 2017, which turned a climb of 52 hairpin bends over the Coll de Sóller into a flat 3 km straight underneath it. That is why Sóller and Port de Sóller are much closer in time than the map of the Serra de Tramuntana suggests.

Which resorts are closest to Palma airport?

Playa de Palma at 6 km, Palma itself at 8 km, then Illetes at 19 km and Portals Nous at 23 km. If your priority is getting from the plane to the pool in under half an hour, that is your shortlist, and the whole southwest coast up to Peguera stays comfortably under 40 minutes.

Worth clearing up here, because it is the single most common mix-up we see: Ballermann is not Magaluf. Ballermann is the German name for Playa de Palma and s Arenal, built around the Balneario 6 beach bar, and it is the closest resort of all to the terminal at 6 km. Magaluf is 21 km further west in Calvià, roughly 27 km and 25 to 30 minutes from the airport. Two different resorts, two different bills, so check which one your hotel is actually in.

At the far end of the scale sit the northeast and the east coast. Nine destinations are more than an hour from the terminal, and Cala Mesquida, Cala Ratjada and Port de Pollença lead the list. None of that is a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to book the transfer instead of collecting a hire car at midnight and finding the Ma-15 in the dark. We drive that road at that hour throughout the season, and the stretch people underestimate is never the motorway, it is the last few kilometres of resort access road.

Why do the Tramuntana distances look inconsistent elsewhere?

Because half the guides online quote the distance from Palma city and the other half from the airport, and the two differ by 8 km or more. We checked the three that get quoted most often against Google Maps driving routes. Sóller is widely listed at 30 km, which is the figure from Palma; from the terminal it is about 33 km, and Port de Sóller about 36. Valldemossa is 18 km from Palma but roughly 28 km from the airport, since you go around the city first. Deià is around 35 km from the terminal on the Ma-11 and then the Ma-10 coast road, and that road is slow by design, so budget 40 to 50 minutes rather than the 30 the kilometres imply.

The same trap catches Magaluf, where several sources publish 18, which is 18 miles rather than 18 kilometres. The real driving distance from PMI is about 27 km. Every figure in our table is a driving distance from the terminal.

Will these times still hold in August?

Mostly, but the peak hours have their own arithmetic. These are normal daytime figures. On an August Saturday between 10:00 and 14:00, the changeover day, the same routes stretch: Alcúdia goes from 46 minutes to 61 in the worst case we measured, and Cala Ratjada from 67 to 90. We measured eight routes with Google’s Routes API across its optimistic, likely and pessimistic traffic models, and crossed them with the Consell de Mallorca’s own traffic counts, in our study of real transfer times from Palma airport. If you are landing at peak, plan with the numbers in that post rather than these.

Where the figures come from

Distances and transfer times are the operating figures we use for each destination page, checked against Google Maps driving routes from the terminal at Son Sant Joan. Times are for normal daytime conditions in a private car and include the run out of the airport, but not waiting at the meeting point. Prices are our fixed one way rate for up to 4 passengers, quoted per car rather than per person, and each links to that destination’s page. Road numbering follows the Consell de Mallorca, which maintains 205 roads on Mallorca totalling 1,578 km, of which only 94.6 km are high capacity motorway. That last figure explains a lot about the times in the table.

Ramon (Asen) Pons Miralles

Founder & Director

Founder and Director of 89transfers with over 8 years of experience in Mallorca's transport and tourism industry. Born in Bulgaria and raised in Mallorca since age 4, Ramon combines deep local knowledge with modern business practices to deliver exceptional transfer services.

8+ years in Mallorca transport industry

25 years in Mallorca

Speaks: Spanish, English, Catalan

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Licensed transport operator, listed in Spain's Registro de Empresas y Actividades de Transporte (Ministry of Transport) Founder and director of 89transfers (since 2017)

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