Tours Val de Loire (TUF) Airport Guide 2026 — Five Routes and a 55-Minute TGV

Last verified: September 2026.

🏢 1. One Runway, Five Routes, and a Season That Ends in October

Tours Val de Loire is a small airport with an unusually clear ownership story, and the story matters because it explains the network. The airport is owned by SMADAIT — the Syndicat mixte pour l’aménagement et le développement de l’aéroport international de Tours Val de Loire, formed in 2009 by the Région Centre-Val de Loire, the Département d’Indre-et-Loire and what is now Tours Métropole Val de Loire. It is operated by EDEIS under a délégation de service public, and the current contract runs 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2035 after an earlier one from 2010 to 2022. EDEIS runs twenty airports in France and its overseas territories.

Physically it is one runway — 02/20, 2,404 metres by 45, hard-surfaced — at 357 feet, with Tours Tower on 124.40. The terminal is at 40 rue de l’Aéroport, 37100 Tours, and it is about 8 km by road from either of the city’s two railway stations.

The network, and the season

Everything here runs on the summer schedule, 29 March to 24 October 2026, and this is the airport’s own published programme:

Two airlines, five destinations. That is the whole scheduled operation, and the airport names only Ryanair and Aer Lingus on its airlines page.

The block times come straight off that same timetable and they are worth knowing before you compare with the train: Tours–Marseille 13:15 to 14:30, an hour and a quarter; Tours–London Stansted 15:40 to 16:05, about an hour and twenty-five once you allow for the time change; Tours–Porto about two hours; Tours–Marrakech close to three; Tours–Dublin about two and a half. (The airport’s Sunday London row prints an arrival earlier than its departure — an obvious typo on their page rather than a real schedule, so use the Wednesday line.)

What the traffic figures say

Eurostat recorded 191,495 passengers in 2025, up from 184,643 in 2024 and down from 206,029 in 2023. Of the 2025 total, 128,965 were international and 62,530 domestic, and — unusually for a small airport — only 2,408 were non-scheduled. There is essentially no charter business here: 1.3% of passengers. Compare that with a typical regional airport where four in ten are on a holiday charter, and you have the shape of Tours: a small, scheduled, low-cost airport, not a beach gate.

The monthly numbers show two different airports layered on top of each other. The international side runs all year — 15,069 passengers in July 2025, but still 9,394 in January and 5,834 in December, so the flights do not stop. The domestic side is purely seasonal: 75 passengers in January 2025, 214 in February, and then 8,825 in April rising to 10,669 in July, before collapsing back to 38 in November and 30 in December. That is the Marseille route switching on and off with the summer season, and it is the single most important thing to check before you plan a winter trip.

All five routes are low-cost, so the bag rules decide the real fare. Price it with our baggage fee checker, read the detail in the Ryanair baggage allowance guide or the Aer Lingus baggage allowance guide, and compare the fare itself with our flight price checker.

🛂 2. Schengen and Euro — and the UK Authorisation the Stansted Flight Needs

France is in the Schengen area and France is in the eurozone. Both are true, and they are still two different memberships: Schengen is a border arrangement covering 29 countries, the euro is a currency shared by 21 of the EU’s 27 member states. Plenty of countries are in one and not the other — arriving from Prague you cross no border but you pay in koruna at the other end; arriving here you cross no border and you pay in euros.

What makes Tours unusual is the composition of its traffic. Of the 128,965 international passengers in 2025, 74,896 — 58% — were extra-EU. That is the direct consequence of a five-route network in which two routes, London Stansted and Marrakech, are outside both the EU and Schengen. At most small French airports the external-border share is a rounding error. Here it is the majority, which means the border controls at Tours do real work.

EES

The EU Entry/Exit System is live. The European Commission states that the system became fully operational on 10 April 2026, completing a progressive roll-out that began on 12 October 2025. For non-EU nationals travelling for a short stay of up to 90 days in any 180, the first crossing of an external Schengen border registers travel-document data, a facial image and fingerprints; subsequent crossings are a faster biometric check against that record. EES has replaced the passport stamp, and refusals of entry are recorded in it too.

Practically, at Tours: if you are arriving on the Stansted or Marrakech flight and you are not an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen, this applies to you and your first crossing of the season is the slow one. If you are arriving from Porto, Dublin or Marseille, you are inside Schengen and inside the EU and you walk out. Given how small this terminal is, the difference between those two experiences is worth planning around — allow more time on the Stansted and Marrakech arrivals than the size of the building suggests.

ETIAS

ETIAS is not in operation. No applications are being collected and no company can sell you a valid ETIAS today; anything advertising one is selling nothing. When it starts, the fee is set at €20 (Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/1411), and applicants under 18 or over 70, and family members of EU citizens, are exempt. It will apply only to visa-exempt non-EU nationals. Ignore any date you see quoted by a third-party site.

The one going the other way: the UK ETA

This is the requirement travellers actually get caught by at Tours, and the airport publishes it on its own formalities page. For the England flight, a valid passport is required — an EU identity card is not accepted — plus an Autorisation électronique de voyage (ETA), the UK’s electronic travel authorisation. For Marrakech, likewise, only a passport is accepted, valid for the duration of the stay. For the EU destinations — Porto, Dublin — a national identity card or passport is enough, and for the domestic Marseille flight Ryanair will also accept a photo driving licence or a residence permit.

One French quirk worth repeating because it strands people: French national identity cards issued to adults between 2 January 2004 and 31 December 2013 had their validity extended from 10 to 15 years, but not every country recognises that extension. The airport’s own advice is to travel on a passport rather than rely on it.

🚌 3. No Airport Bus: a Taxi, or a Kilometre’s Walk to the Tram

Let me be blunt about this rather than bury it: no bus route serves the terminal. The airport’s own transport page lists exactly three things — taxis, tram line A, and Fil Bleu bus line 2 — and the two public-transport entries both point at the same place, a stop called Vaucanson that is not at the airport.

The Vaucanson walk is the thing nobody tells you. It is 1.1 km on the road from the terminal door — call it fifteen minutes with a bag, less without one — and at the end of it is the northern terminus of Tours’ tram line A, which runs straight down through the city and past the railway station. If you are travelling light and the weather is fine, that is a genuinely cheap way into Tours. If you have two suitcases and it is raining in February, take the taxi and do not feel bad about it.

For the fare on Fil Bleu, buy from the machine, the app or the driver as the network allows and check the current tariff — the operator publishes it through an interactive selector rather than a fixed table, so the number moves. Fil Bleu’s information line is +33 (0)2 47 66 70 70.

Parking, which is now paid

The car park went paid on 1 July 2025 after the owner rebuilt and secured it. SMADAIT publishes 480 spaces including 15 accessible bays, open 24 hours, video-monitored, with direct access to the terminal and no reservation system — the operator’s stated reason being that the car park does not saturate. (The airport’s own access page still says 400 spaces; SMADAIT, which owns and prices it, says 480.)

The 2026 tariff, voted by SMADAIT’s elected members:

Take a ticket at the entry barrier, keep it, and pay at the machine in front of the terminal before you drive out — the operator recommends that over paying at the exit barrier. Any started price band is charged in full. Stays of three months or more need prior authorisation from SMADAIT.

Two free hours is generous and it is the number to remember: it covers a drop-off, a coffee and a proper goodbye, which at most airports costs money.

The two stations

Tours has two railway stations and they are not the same place. Gare de Tours is the terminus in the city centre, about 7.9 km from the airport. Saint-Pierre-des-Corps is about 2.5 km east of it and 8.5 km from the airport, and it is where the TGVs call. The airport quotes 10 minutes to each and 55 minutes by TGV from Paris Montparnasse. Book the wrong one and you will be fine — they are close and connected — but know which you are heading for.

🛋️ 4. No Lounge, One Restaurant, and Opening Hours Worth Reading Twice

Tours has no airport lounge. Priority Pass, the largest independent lounge network, publishes its French inventory as nine airports — Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nice, Paris Charles de Gaulle, Paris Orly and Toulouse — and Tours is not among them. There is no paid lounge and no card that gets you into one.

What there is, is one restaurant: Hélices et Délices, at 4 rue de l’Aéroport, telephone 02 47 51 11 54, which the airport says welcomes you every day. That is the entire commercial offer the airport lists. For an airport moving under 200,000 passengers a year on five routes, that is proportionate rather than mean — but do not arrive expecting a shopping street.

Now the opening hours, which are the practical trap. The airport publishes its hours as 08:00 to 19:00, Monday to Sunday including public holidays. Look at the Dublin flight: it departs at 19:40 on Saturdays. Those two facts cannot both describe the terminal, so treat 08:00–19:00 as the office and information-desk window rather than a hard closing time, and confirm with your airline when the check-in desks actually open for a late departure. It is a small airport with a small staff; do not turn up at 06:00 for an evening flight assuming you can wait inside.

The practical upshot at a terminal this size is the same as at every small airport: there is nothing to gain from arriving early. Follow the airline’s stated check-in window, eat in Tours or at Hélices et Délices, and clear security when it opens.

🍽️ 5. What to Eat in Touraine — and the Wine You Drink at Chenonceau

The airport will not feed you memorably, and it does not pretend otherwise. Touraine will.

This is one of the great eating and drinking regions of France, and the airport’s own description of it — “reconnue pour ses vins et traditionnellement associée à la douceur de vivre” — is doing a lot of quiet work. Tours itself is where you should eat: place Plumereau, the heart of the old town, fills its terraces with the first sun, and the streets running off rue Colbert — which follows the main east–west axis of the Gallo-Roman city and is lined with fifteenth- and sixteenth-century timber-framed houses — are where the restaurants are.

On the wine, the appellation to look for on this side of the region is Touraine-Chenonceaux, and the best possible place to taste it is the château that gives it its name: the Cave des Dômes runs tastings of AOC Touraine-Chenonceaux inside the Château de Chenonceau, and the regional transport authority lists it as reachable by Rémi coach from Tours — no car needed. Further east, the Centre-Val de Loire’s other famous names are Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, Menetou-Salon, Quincy, Reuilly, Coteaux du Giennois and Châteaumeillant; the Maison des Sancerre exists specifically to make that world approachable, and is reachable by Rémi coach from Bourges or Cosne-sur-Loire.

Two sweet things in the region are worth a detour on their own and both sit next to a station. The tarte Tatin was born at Lamotte-Beuvron, and the Maison Tatin stands directly opposite the station there. And at Maison Mazet in Montargis, 1.3 km from the station, you can taste praslines — caramelised almonds made to a recipe dating from 1636.

Buy your wine at a domaine rather than at the airport. There is no duty-free worth the name here, and everything you would want is cheaper and better four kilometres from where it was grown.

💡 6. Insider: When Flying to Tours Beats the Train, and the Châteaux You Can Reach Without a Car

When the plane wins, and when it plainly does not

This is the question that decides whether Tours’ airport is useful to you, and the answer is sharper than most airports allow.

If your journey is to or from Paris, never fly. The airport itself advertises 55 minutes by TGV from Paris Montparnasse to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, ten minutes from the terminal. No flight competes with that, and no flight exists.

If your journey is to Marseille, the plane wins on time — in summer. The airport’s timetable gives Tours 13:15 → Marseille 14:30, an hour and a quarter, up to seven days a week. Against a cross-country rail journey that is a decisive advantage. But look at the Eurostat monthly figures before you build a life around it: the domestic route carried 10,669 passengers in July 2025 and 30 in December. From roughly November to March it is not there, and the train is your only option regardless.

If your journey is to London, Porto, Marrakech or Dublin, the question is your dates, not your speed. Two flights a week to Stansted, up to three to Porto, up to two to Marrakech, one a week to Dublin in high summer only. If a departure falls on your day, flying from Tours is far better than flying from Paris: you park for €15 a day, you are through a terminal in minutes, and you skip a train and an airport transfer at the far end. If it does not, the TGV puts you at Montparnasse in 55 minutes and Paris has every route in Europe several times a day. The frequency, not the flight time, is what makes or breaks this airport.

And if you are coming to see the Loire, flying into Tours is the right answer more often than people realise, because you land in the middle of the châteaux instead of two hours away.

The châteaux you can reach without a car — and the ones you cannot

This is the part most guides fudge. The regional transport authority, Rémi, publishes exactly which sites are reachable by train or coach and how far the walk is from the station. Here is the list that matters, with its distances:

Chambord is the exception that has been solved. It has no station of its own, but Rémi coach line 2 runs from Blois-Chambord station all year, Monday to Sunday, and takes 35 minutes to the château. Departures from the station are at 09:20 and 12:20; the return coach passes at 13:10 and 17:00. The ticket is €3.40 each way, €6.80 return, bought from the driver by card or cash, and there is a combined train-plus-coach ticket on the TER site. Two things make it better than it sounds: keep the coach ticket and it gets you a discount on château entry, and there is a “Pack Rémi + Chambord” bundling train, coach and admission at 50% off. You can take a bike on the coach if you reserve by phone — 0 806 70 33 33, the day before by 17:00 on weekdays, or by 17:00 on Friday for the weekend. Note that Chambord closes on 1 January and 25 December 2026, and on Mondays in low season outside school holidays.

And the ones where you genuinely need a car or a bike: Villandry. Its gardens are the reason half the visitors come to Touraine, and the nearest station is Savonnières, about 4 km away — Rémi lists the petrifying caves at Savonnières-Villandry as 2.6 km from that station, and the château is further again. It is a pleasant flat ride and a dull walk. Likewise Chaumont-sur-Loire, Cheverny and Villesavin are château-country proper: reachable, but not on foot from a platform.

One day in Tours itself

If you have a spare afternoon before a flight, the city rewards it. The Cathédrale Saint-Gatien took from 1170 to 1547 to build, which is why its towers run Romanesque at the base into Gothic on one side and Renaissance on the other, and it holds fifteen stained-glass windows from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries. The Basilique Saint-Martin holds the saint’s tomb; of the medieval basilica only the Tour Charlemagne and the Tour de l’Horloge survive on rue des Halles, and the early-sixteenth-century cloister is the thing not to miss. The Musée des Beaux-Arts, 900 m from Tours station, holds a collection of Italian primitives that Rémi rates as among the richest in France after the Louvre. The tourist office is at 78 rue Bernard-Palissy (02 47 70 37 37), open daily except Sunday afternoons from October to March.

Tours was once the capital of a kingdom, and it still carries itself that way. It is also — and this is the practical point — the one place in the Loire where you can arrive by air, sleep in the middle of a city, and reach half a dozen of the great châteaux on a regional train ticket.

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📊 2026 Summary Data Table