📋 Table of Contents

🏢 Terminal, Layout & Why AEP Is Not Ezeiza

AEP is one terminal, not a sprawl. The building runs along Avenida Costanera Rafael Obligado on the Río de la Plata, with the river on one side and the Palermo parks on the other. Arrivals are on the ground floor; check-in and departures sit above. There are three boarding sectors — A, B and C — connected inside the same structure, so a “terminal change” here means a walk, not a shuttle. Total floor area is over 30,000 m². It runs 24 hours, though the food and retail downstairs effectively wind down with the last domestic departures.

The airport opened in 1947 as a recreational airfield (“an aerodrome within a park,” in the original designer’s framing) and took the name of Jorge Newbery, an early Argentine aviation figure. The version you’ll walk through is much newer. It was re-inaugurated in March 2021 after roughly a year of works that extended the single runway by 590 metres to 2,690 m and added terminal space on the international side. The runway sits on reclaimed land at the river’s edge, which is why approaches and departures run out over the water — worth a window seat.

Scale-wise, AEP is busy for a one-terminal, one-runway airport: it moved on the order of 14.9 million passengers in 2024, almost all of it domestic, which makes it the highest-traffic domestic airport in the country. That volume through a single building is the reason peak-hour security and the lounges back up — there’s no second concourse to spread the load. The flip side is that the place is compact and quick to navigate: from kerb to gate is a short walk, and a “connection” between sectors A, B and C is a stroll across the same floor, not a transfer.

One practical orientation note: arrivals and the ground-transport options (taxi rank, rideshare pickup, bus stops) are all on the city-facing side, away from the river. You won’t get lost — the terminal is linear and signed in Spanish and English — but the rideshare apps in particular send you to a specific car park rather than the arrivals kerb, so read the next section before you walk out looking for your Uber.

The split you need to understand: AEP versus EZE. Buenos Aires has two airports and they do different jobs.

• AEP (Aeroparque Jorge Newbery) — in the city, 6.5 km from the centre. Handles the domestic network (Bariloche, Mendoza, Iguazú, Salta, El Calafate, Ushuaia, Córdoba, and dozens more) plus short regional international hops: Montevideo and Punta del Este in Uruguay, Asunción in Paraguay, Santiago in Chile, and São Paulo and Rio in Brazil.
• EZE (Ministro Pistarini / Ezeiza) — 30 km south, the long-haul gateway for Europe, North America, and the rest of the world.

The practical trap: if you land internationally at EZE and connect to a domestic flight, that domestic flight very often leaves from AEP, across the city. Aerolíneas Argentinas sometimes co-locates connections, but assume nothing — check which airport your second flight uses, and budget 60–90 minutes of cross-city transfer between the two if needed. There is a direct bus between them (colectivo line 8), but with luggage and a flight to catch, most people take a car.

Who flies here. The dominant operator is Aerolíneas Argentinas, which runs AEP as its domestic hub. The low-cost carriers JetSmart Argentina and Flybondi base most of their domestic flying here too. LATAM operates regional and domestic services; GOL and Copa appear on the Brazil and Panama-connection routes; Paranair runs Paraguay links. For anywhere outside South America, you are flying from Ezeiza.

🛂 Entry, Currency & the 2025 Currency Reset

Visa. Argentina is visa-free for tourism for up to 90 days for citizens of the United States, United Kingdom, the EU member states, Canada, Australia, and most Western and Latin American countries. No advance e-visa, no online pre-registration form for ordinary tourist entry. Carry a passport valid for the duration of your stay (six months’ validity is the safe convention even where not strictly demanded). On most regional international arrivals at AEP you clear a small immigration hall — far faster than Ezeiza’s queues.

The reciprocity fee is gone — stop looking for it. Argentina used to charge an entry “reciprocity fee” on US, Canadian and Australian travellers. The US fee was permanently eliminated by decree in 2016; the Canadian and Australian charges were suspended in 2017–2018. As of 2026 none of these is collected. If a third-party website tries to sell you an “Argentina reciprocity fee” payment, it is selling you nothing.

2026 entry requirement — travel medical insurance. This is the one genuinely new rule. Under Decree 366/2025, in force since 1 July 2025, foreign visitors are required to carry valid travel medical insurance covering medical care, hospitalisation, and emergency evacuation/repatriation for the length of their stay, and to make a sworn declaration of travel purpose on entry. Enforcement at the border has been light — tourists from visa-waiver countries report rarely being asked to show a policy — but it is now the formal requirement, so travel with cover and the paperwork accessible. This is a national rule and applies whether you arrive at AEP, EZE, or a land crossing.

No yellow fever, no altitude. Buenos Aires is at sea level — there is no altitude issue here (that’s Bariloche-adjacent mountain country or the northwest, not the capital). Yellow fever vaccination is not required for entry to Argentina for general tourism; it only becomes relevant if you’re heading deep into the subtropical northeast (Iguazú/Misiones) and even then it’s a recommendation, not a border condition. Check your own onward plans, but for a Buenos Aires arrival there is nothing to do here.

The currency — read this, it changed. For most of the last decade Argentina ran a controlled official exchange rate alongside a parallel “blue dollar” cash market, and the gap between them was huge — at times the blue rate gave tourists 50–80% more pesos per dollar than the official one. The old advice (“bring crisp US dollar bills, change them at a cueva, never use your card, use Western Union”) was correct for years.

That world ended. In April 2025 the Milei government lifted most of the currency controls (the cepo cambiario) and moved to a floating band between roughly 1,000 and 1,400 pesos per dollar. The effect on travellers is the important part: the official rate, the “blue” cash rate, and the card/MEP rate have converged. As of late May 2026 all of them sit in the rough range of 1,400–1,460 ARS per US dollar, with only a small spread between them. The dramatic two-tier premium that defined a trip to Argentina is, for now, gone.

What that means in practice for 2026:
– Cards are fine again. Visa and Mastercard charge close to the prevailing rate. The reason to avoid cards used to be that they billed at the punitive official rate; that gap has closed.
– ATMs work but Argentine ATMs are stingy — low per-withdrawal caps and a fixed peso fee per transaction make them expensive for small pulls. Withdraw the maximum in one go.
– Cash US dollars still get a marginally better rate at a cueva or some exchange houses than a card does, but the edge is now a few percent, not a doubling. Bringing a cushion of clean USD bills as backup is still sensible; building your whole trip around cash-dollar arbitrage is no longer worth the hassle.
– Western Union, once the tourist’s best trick for the blue rate, has lost most of its advantage for the same reason. Check the live rate the day you transact rather than assuming.

There is no currency exchange advantage to be gained inside the AEP terminal — airport exchange desks give poor rates everywhere. Pull a small amount of pesos from an ATM or pay the taxi by card/app and sort out larger cash needs in the city.

The peso comes in notes of 1,000, 2,000, 10,000 and 20,000 pesos (higher denominations were introduced precisely because inflation made the old 100s and 500s near-useless). Inflation is still real, so prices in this guide are anchored to May 2026 and will drift — treat peso figures as “verify on the day,” and note that USD-equivalents are the more stable reference.

🚆 Getting Into Buenos Aires — Every Option, Priced

AEP’s selling point is the 6.5 km. Nothing here is a long haul. The choice is between cost and convenience, not between fast and slow.

Official taxi (QR fixed-fare system). The regulated taxi rank is in the domestic arrivals area, by the McDonald’s. The current system uses a QR code: you scan it, enter your destination, passenger count and luggage, and it generates a fixed, regulated fare before you get in the car — which removes the meter-haggling that used to define airport taxis here. Expect roughly ARS 8,000–15,000 to the central neighbourhoods (Recoleta, Microcentro, Palermo) as of May 2026, i.e. very roughly USD 6–11, and 10–20 minutes. Use the official rank, not a tout offering a ride inside the terminal.

Rideshare apps — Uber, Cabify, DiDi. All three operate in Buenos Aires and are widely used. They are usually a little cheaper than the taxi and the price is locked in the app, which removes any language or fare friction. The catch at AEP is the pickup choreography, because the apps don’t load at the kerb:
– Uber picks up from the South Parking Lot (Estacionamiento Sur) — follow the signs out of the terminal.
– Cabify uses the remises stand near Tostado Café Club in domestic arrivals, and stand C1 in international arrivals.
– DiDi operates citywide; follow the in-app pickup point.

Match the plate and driver name in the app before getting in, as anywhere. App fares to the centre tend to land a touch under the taxi, in the same ARS 7,000–13,000 band depending on surge.

City bus (colectivo) — cheapest by far, if you travel light. Several public bus lines stop at or near AEP: among them 33 (toward Retiro/Constitución), 45 (toward the centre), and 37 and 160 serving other districts. Fares are a fraction of a taxi — the registered-SUBE colectivo fare for a trip of this distance was around ARS 900 as of the May 2026 fare schedule (the unregistered-card fare is higher, around ARS 1,200). The non-negotiable requirement: you must pay with a SUBE card. Drivers don’t take cash. Buy a physical SUBE at a kiosk or station, load credit, and tap on. Buses are genuinely cheap and frequent but unfriendly with large luggage and standing crowds — fine for a backpack, miserable with two suitcases.

Line 8 to Ezeiza. If your onward connection is at EZE, colectivo line 8 runs between the two airports — useful and cheap on SUBE, slow with bags. For a tight connection, take a car.

Tienda León shuttle. Manuel Tienda León runs scheduled airport coach services, principally the AEP–EZE and EZE–centre legs; from AEP into town it’s a fixed-price coach option (in the order of USD 8 equivalent), departing roughly every 30–45 minutes across the day. Reviews are mixed on punctuality. For the short AEP-to-centre run specifically, a taxi or app is usually the better value given how close the airport is.

Rental car. Major agencies have desks at AEP. Honestly, for a Buenos Aires city stay a car is a liability — parking is scarce, traffic is assertive, and the centre is walkable plus served by Subte (metro) and buses. Rent only if your plan is to drive out of the city (the wine country, the coast, Patagonia road trips), and ideally pick it up the day you actually leave town.

The new line for 2026 — colectivo 114. AEP’s bus connectivity got a genuine upgrade this year. On 20 February 2026, line 114 extended its route (a new “Ramal C”) to reach Aeroparque for the first time, running from the airport’s South Parking area out through Núñez and across to Villa Devoto in the city’s west. It made line 114 the eighth bus line to serve the airport and closed a long-standing gap toward the western neighbourhoods that previously meant a transfer. Useful if Devoto/Núñez is where you’re headed; for the central tourist neighbourhoods the 33 and 45 remain the more direct picks.

A note on the SUBE card. SUBE is the single contactless card that pays for every colectivo, the Subte (metro), and the commuter trains, including the Mitre line out to Tigre. If you intend to use any public transport in Buenos Aires, get one early: buy the physical card at a kiosk or station, load credit in cash or at a terminal, and tap. Registering the card in your name unlocks the cheaper “registered” fare tier (the difference is roughly ARS 900 versus ARS 1,200 on a single ride), but registration is bureaucratic for a short-trip visitor, so many tourists simply use it unregistered and pay the slightly higher fare. One card can’t pay for two passengers on the same vehicle in the usual setup, so a couple needs two cards or should just take a car.

The comparison, short version: colectivo if you’re light and counting pesos (~ARS 900 on SUBE); app/taxi for everyone else (~ARS 8,000–15,000, 10–20 min); line 8 only for the AEP–EZE transfer on a budget; line 114 if you’re heading to the western barrios.

🛋️ Lounges — What’s Here, What Isn’t

AEP is a domestic-first airport, so the lounge scene is modest and the recurring complaint is the same one you’ll hear at every busy regional hub: when it’s full, you wait, and sometimes you don’t get in at all.

AMAE Lounge is the Priority Pass option. It’s airside — past security and passport control — on the first floor near Gate 1, and it runs effectively 24 hours. Priority Pass holders get in; the lounge enforces a maximum three-hour stay, and children under two enter free. This is the one to aim for if you hold a Priority Pass or a card that bundles it. Go early in your wait, because it queues.

Aerolíneas Argentinas Club Cóndor sits in the domestic departures area near Gate 13, open roughly 04:30–23:30. Access is for Aerolíneas’s own Club Cóndor and Aerolíneas Plus Diamond/Platinum members, premium-cabin passengers, and eligible SkyTeam partner elites — not a pay-in-with-a-credit-card lounge for the general traveller.

LATAM Lounge is in the Terminal A sector, open roughly 05:00–23:00, serving LATAM’s premium passengers and oneworld elites.

What’s absent: there’s no global super-brand flagship here — no Centurion-style American Express lounge, and the network-lounge presence is thin compared with Ezeiza. If your card’s headline perk is a specific premium lounge brand, assume it isn’t at AEP and plan around the AMAE/Priority Pass route or simply use the terminal cafés. Given how short the trip into the city is, a long pre-flight lounge stint matters less here than at an airport an hour out of town.

A practical lounge strategy for AEP. Because the dominant traffic is domestic and the building is single-concourse, the lounges fill at the morning and early-evening departure peaks. If you hold Priority Pass and your flight is at a busy hour, get to AMAE early in your wait rather than counting on walking in 40 minutes before boarding — when it’s at capacity the answer is simply no, and there isn’t a second comparable option to fall back on. The three-hour cap is rarely a problem at a domestic airport where most people aren’t waiting that long anyway. If you don’t have lounge access at all, the terminal cafés are perfectly adequate for the short waits AEP’s flights typically involve, and the city’s far better coffee is 15 minutes away if your schedule allows a run out.

🍽️ Food & Duty-Free

AEP’s food court is functional rather than a destination — cafés, fast food, a few sit-down counters spread across the terminal levels, thinning out late at night. You will pay an airport premium. The same café con leche y medialunas (coffee and the small, sweet Argentine croissants) that costs you a modest sum at a porteño corner café will run noticeably higher inside the terminal; the gap is real but not outrageous, on the order of a 30–50% airport markup.

The dishes worth knowing, so you order them right in the city:
– Asado / parrilla — Argentine grilled beef is the national set piece. A proper parrilla lunch in town is one of the things to actually do in Buenos Aires; the airport version is a pale stand-in.
– Empanadas — baked or fried hand pies, beef (carne) the default, a cheap and reliable snack that travels well onto a domestic flight.
– Milanesa — breaded cutlet, often served as a milanesa napolitana with ham, cheese and tomato; the everyday comfort plate.
– Medialunas and alfajores — the croissants and the dulce-de-leche-filled sandwich cookies. Alfajores are the souvenir-grade item; brands like Havanna are sold across the terminal and make the standard edible gift.
– Dulce de leche and Argentine Malbec are the two things genuinely worth buying before you fly out, if AEP is your departure point on an international leg — though most travellers buy wine in the city or at Ezeiza, where the international duty-free is larger. AEP’s duty-free is sized for a domestic-heavy airport: smaller, less to choose from.

Per the no-fabrication rule of this guide, specific terminal restaurant names change with concession cycles and aren’t worth committing to print here; you’ll find the recognisable Argentine café and grill chains plus the global fast-food names. For anything memorable, eat in the city — you’re 15 minutes from some of the best beef in the world.

💡 Layovers & Day-Trips From AEP

This is where AEP’s location pays off. Because the airport is in the city rather than 30 km outside it, even a modest layover is usable — which is almost never true at the airport you’d otherwise compare it to.

The layover math. From AEP, a car into a central neighbourhood and back is about 20 minutes each way in normal traffic, call it 40–50 minutes of round-trip transit. Add the standard pre-flight buffer — for a domestic flight, aim to be back at the terminal 90 minutes before departure; for a regional international flight, 2 hours. So:
– A 4-hour layover comfortably buys you a quick trip out — a walk along Puerto Madero‘s docks (the closest worthwhile bite of the city, ~10–15 min by car) or a fast loop of Recoleta including the cemetery.
– A 6-hour layover is enough for a proper sit-down parrilla lunch in Palermo or Recoleta and still get back unhurried.
– Anything under ~3 hours, stay airside. The city is close, but security and check-in eat the margin.

Inside the city (short hops):
– Puerto Madero — the redeveloped dockside district, ~10–15 min by car. Riverside walk, the Puente de la Mujer footbridge, restaurants. The most layover-efficient slice of Buenos Aires.
– Recoleta — ~10–15 min. The Recoleta Cemetery (Eva Perón’s grave among the mausoleums) is the headline; the surrounding streets are the city’s grand-European face.
– Palermo — effectively next door (~2 km / under 10 min). Parks, the Rose Garden, and the Palermo Soho restaurant grid.

Genuine day-trips (need a real day, not a layover):
– Tigre Delta — the river-delta town north of the city. Reached by the Mitre line train from Retiro station, roughly 50–67 minutes each way depending on the service, for a couple of dollars on SUBE. Boat trips thread the delta channels. This is a full half-day-plus outing once you’ve added the trip in from AEP, so it’s a day-trip, not a layover move. (Note: the Mitre/Tigre line has been subject to maintenance closures — verify it’s running before you commit.)
– Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay — the UNESCO-listed colonial town across the river. Buquebus fast ferries from the Puerto Madero terminal cross in about 1 hour 15 minutes (some fast services as quick as ~50–60 min); fares are in the order of USD 65 each way. It’s a passport-crossing into another country and a long day; feasible only on a genuine full-day stop, and tight even then. Don’t attempt it on a layover.

Reality check: the layover-friendly options are the in-city ones. Tigre and Colonia are real and worth doing — but as planned day-trips, not as something you slot between two flights.

🔧 Practical Notes — Connectivity, Currency, Safety

Wi-Fi and SIM. AEP has free terminal Wi-Fi. For data on arrival, an eSIM bought before you fly is the cleanest option; otherwise local providers (Claro, Movistar, Personal) sell tourist SIMs, though setup with a foreign passport can be fiddly — an eSIM avoids the queue.

Money, quickly. Pay the taxi or app by card; pull a modest amount of pesos from an ATM in town (high fees, low caps — withdraw the maximum at once); keep some clean US-dollar cash as backup. The blue-market gymnastics of past years are no longer the move (see the currency section). Don’t change money at the airport desks.

Safety. Buenos Aires is a large city with normal big-city petty crime, not a war zone. The thing to manage is opportunistic theft — phones snatched at café tables, bags lifted on crowded transport, distraction scams. Keep your phone off the table and your bag in your lap on the colectivo and the Subte. Retiro station and its surrounding area (where the Mitre/Tigre train departs, and near the bus terminal) warrant a bit more attention, especially after dark. Use the official taxi rank and the in-app driver match rather than unmarked cars.

Tipping. Restaurants: around 10% if service isn’t already included (a cubierto cover charge is separate and not a tip). Taxis: round up. It’s appreciated, not rigidly expected.

Tap water. Tap water in Buenos Aires is safe to drink. Bottled is everywhere if you prefer it, but you don’t need it for safety in the city.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

📊 2026 Summary Data Table