Flights to Punta Mita: No Airport — Fly to Puerto Vallarta

There is no airport in Punta Mita. There never has been. You fly to Puerto Vallarta, and then you drive for three-quarters of an hour with the bay on your left.

That is the entire answer, and the rest of this page is how to make the three-quarters of an hour pleasant.

What PVR is now

Puerto Vallarta International is the gateway for the whole of Riviera Nayarit, and it has changed. Our own report on what the expansion actually changed sets out the detail: a new terminal building and more gates, with capacity going from roughly five million passengers a year to over eight, and the main work done and operating by 2026.

In practice, for a group of twelve arriving at four in the afternoon, what that means is immigration that moves and a kerb you can actually find your driver on. It used to be the worst twenty minutes of the trip. It is not any more.

Who flies there

Our airport report names American Airlines, Delta, United, Alaska Airlines and Southwest among the carriers operating at PVR, plus international airlines.

We are deliberately not publishing a list of routes. Direct service into Puerto Vallarta changes every season, winter is much better served than summer, and any article that names fifteen city pairs will be wrong within a year. Check the airline. If your group is coming in from several cities, send us the arrival times and we will work out whether one car meets everybody or three cars meet three flights.

What is worth saying plainly: do not fly to Guadalajara or Mexico City and drive. People ask, because the fares sometimes look better. By the time you have added the second flight or the long road you have lost the day and saved nothing.

The drive: forty-five to sixty minutes

North out of the airport, up the coast past Bucerías and La Cruz, then the turn for Punta de Mita. Our own Punta Mita page puts it at forty-five to sixty minutes depending on the hour and on where your house sits — the far side of the peninsula is a real ten minutes further than El Anclote.

The concierge arranges the transfer and it is private, door to door, one vehicle for your party: six sizes, from a three-seat Caddy up to a Sprinter that takes seventeen. Alexa, who runs it, asks for the flight number, the villa and whether you need child seats, and confirms the plan before you travel. If you are staying in one of our houses she already has the address and the gate instructions, which matters more than it sounds like it should, because several of the good addresses out there are not findable by a phone.

One thing worth doing before you land: if you want the house stocked, say so when you book the car, not when you get in it.

If you are flying private

Private aircraft use Puerto Vallarta too. The drive is the same drive.

The part that is genuinely worth a phone call is the empty legs — aircraft repositioning in or out of Mexico with nobody on board, priced accordingly. We keep our empty-leg page current, and what is on it changes every week, which is why this article does not list any of it. The page describes itself honestly enough: the only Mexico jet broker that also handles your villa. That is the whole proposition — one team books the aircraft, the car that meets it and the house at the other end, and nobody is handing you between three companies at eleven at night.

We are not going to put hourly rates in a magazine article. Ask, and you get a quote for the actual aircraft on the actual date.

When to come, and what you land into

Mexico works all year and we will not tell you to avoid a month. Winter is drier and cooler and brings the whales into Banderas Bay from the middle of December to the end of March, which from a terrace at Casa Maka on El Farallón is something you watch over breakfast rather than book. Summer is hotter and wetter, greener, quieter, and not a problem for anyone who has been warm before.

Whenever you land, the first evening tends to go the same way: the chef has something ready, nobody unpacks properly, and somebody drives into Sayulita the next morning because they heard about it on the plane. It is thirty-eight kilometres north and worth the hour.

Start with the houses: Punta Mita.