Roatan airport arrivals and departures (RTB)

Roatan airport is Juan Manuel Gálvez International, code RTB, ICAO MHRO, sitting just east of Coxen Hole on the south shore. It is the only one on the island, which makes a common question easy to answer: the closest airport to Roatan Honduras is Roatan itself.

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The name you will see on a boarding pass is sometimes RTB Roatan, sometimes Roatan island airport, sometimes Coxen Hole airport. They are the same place. There is no second field, and no other island in the Bay Islands takes a jet, so every arrival to Roatán lands on the same strip. 36 movements across 9 cities on the day this page was last built.

Why some flights can be tracked live and others never will be

A live map only shows aircraft that broadcast their own position, and Honduras has published no ADS-B mandate: in the region, only Guatemala and El Salvador require it. Measured on 2026-09-13, the free tracking networks logged 473 landings at Miami and 170 at Cancún in twenty-four hours, and zero at Roatan, San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa.

So the split used in the table above is the only one the data supports: the international flights can be followed, the local ones can only be scheduled. Any site showing you a complete live map of this airport is showing you something it cannot have.

What is the Roatán airport code?

RTB is the IATA code you will see on your boarding pass and on the luggage tag. The ICAO code, the one pilots and flight trackers use, is MHRO. Both point at the same single runway: Juan Manuel Gálvez International, at Coxen Hole. There is no second airport on the island, so if a booking site offers you anything other than RTB for Roatán, it is sending you to the mainland.

Direct flights to Roatán

The question almost everyone asks before booking: can I get here without a connection? It depends on which country you are leaving from, and the two answers are not alike.

From the United States, year round

Today the schedule shows non-stop service between Roatán and Houston, Miami. These are the routes that run through the year rather than for one winter season, so an American traveller does not have to route through San Pedro Sula and pick up a second flight.

Which airlines fly to Roatán

On today’s schedule the international carriers are Tropic Air, TAG, United, American, alongside the Honduran domestic airlines that link the island to the mainland and to Guanaja. The list is read from the same schedule as the table above, so a route that opens or closes shows up here on its own.

Buying a local flight to Roatán, Guanaja or Utila

The domestic carriers are how you get here from anywhere else in Honduras.

Where to buy

Neither shows up in the big booking engines. You buy direct, on their own sites.

Aerolíneas Sosa La Ceiba · San Pedro Sula · Roatán Book a flight → Official site CM Airlines San Pedro Sula · La Ceiba · Tegucigalpa · Roatán · Guanaja · Utila Book a flight → Official site

We do not sell these tickets and earn nothing on them. These links go to the carriers’ own sites.

Between them they link the island to San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba on the mainland, and onward to Guanaja and Utila.

What you can actually take with you

These are small turboprops, and the two carriers do not treat baggage the same way. What follows was read on their own sites on 14 September 2026.

Aerolíneas Sosa publishes its allowance in full:

• One free checked piece, between 35 and 50 lb depending on the fare
• 50 lb maximum per adult, 25 lb per child, and no single piece over 70 lb
• one personal item on top of that: laptop, handbag or small backpack, 10 lb
• size limits: 100 cm checked, 45 cm in the cabin

CM Airlines sells three fare classes, and this is where it gets confusing: the published table applies to international flights only.

• Opti: 2 checked bags of 35 lb · Classic: 1 bag of 35 lb · Light: none
• every fare includes a 10 lb personal item, which their page says goes in the overhead bin, not under the seat
• excess is US$3 per pound internationally but only US$1 per pound on domestic Honduran flights
• buying a bag in advance costs US$30 through their call centre more than 24 hours out, and US$35 inside 24 hours or at the counter

For a flight inside Honduras, CM publishes no free allowance at all. Their own wording is that it « depends on the fare purchased and may vary depending on the sales channel ». So on the routes that bring you here, you only find out what you are entitled to at the moment you book. Check the fare rules on the booking screen before you pay, not after.

⚠️ And the number nobody reads until it is too late. Sosa caps its liability for a lost, destroyed or missing bag at L 800, which is roughly US$32, whatever was inside it. If you are checking dive gear, camera bodies or anything you could not replace on the island, that is what a lost bag is worth to the airline. Carry it on, or insure it.

From La Ceiba specifically, the boat is a real alternative rather than a fallback: the ferry, what it costs and whether to take it.

Track the price of flights

Google Flights keeps the price history and tells you when it moves. Open it from your city, then switch on price tracking on the page that loads.

From the United States

• Miami to Roatán MIA → RTB
• Houston to Roatán IAH → RTB
• New York to Roatán NYC → RTB
• Atlanta to Roatán ATL → RTB
• Dallas to Roatán DFW → RTB
• Boston to Roatán BOS → RTB
• Another city → RTB

From Canada

• Montréal YUL → RTB
• Québec YQB → RTB
• Ottawa YOW → RTB
• Toronto YYZ → RTB

Canadian service is seasonal and changes every winter: what flies from Canada, carrier by carrier.

The alert lives in YOUR Google account: we cannot switch it on for you, and we see nothing of what you search. These are departure cities, not non-stop routes. And do not be thrown by the name, Google calls Roatán’s airport “Coxen Hole”.

From Canada, seasonal only

There is no year-round non-stop flight from Canada to Roatán. The Canadian carriers fly here for the winter and stop again in spring, on fixed weekdays, which is why a date that works in February does not exist in July. Because those seasons, carriers and departure cities change every year, we keep them on one page rather than repeating them here: the Canadian carriers and their winter season.

Outside those months, the usual route from Canada is a connection through the United States, which puts you on one of the year-round flights listed above.

Landing at RTB: the first hour

RTB has one runway, a little over two kilometres of asphalt laid along the water, and and that is short by the standards of the jets that use it. Pilots get on the brakes hard and early, and anyone used to a mile of spare tarmac in Houston or Atlanta feels it in the seat back. One passenger described it to us, laughing about it, once he was off the plane. Nothing is going wrong. It is a normal landing on a runway that leaves no room for a leisurely rollout.

The terminal you step into is not the one in the photos you may have seen. A public rebuild reopened it in late 2025, and the figures come from the airport authority itself: the waiting areas now hold 1,268 seats, there are 28 check-in counters, six boarding gates, and immigration runs 15 desks on arrival and 8 on departure. That is the number that decides how long you stand in line. Parking holds 128 vehicles. The three baggage belts were replaced rather than added, so bags still come off on three belts, just newer ones. Work on the rest of the building, and on the runway, continues. ⚠️ If a guide tells you RTB is a cramped one-room airport, it is describing a building that closed.

Budget about an hour between the aircraft door and the exit of the building. The fifteen desks quoted above are a capacity, not a promise: they are not all staffed. If you land behind an international arrival, make it an hour and a half.

Two practical consequences: the pickup time you give anyone waiting for you, and the meal you were planning on arrival. The table higher up this page tells you whether another aircraft lands just before yours.

One thing worth settling before you fly: Honduras has two entry forms, and you almost certainly only need one of them. The one that counts is the customs declaration; the immigration pre-check stopped being compulsory in December 2023, and plenty of travellers still fill it in for nothing.

Getting from the airport to where you are staying

West End and West Bay, where most visitors sleep, are about twenty to thirty minutes west of the terminal. Taxis are arranged inside the terminal, not out on the kerb. This is the part worth knowing before you land: the fares are posted on the wall by the exit. Read them before you agree to anything.

Flying out of Roatán

Two hours before departure is right for an airport this size. The walk from the door to the gate is short and the queues are not the ones you know from a large hub. The exception is worth planning for: when two or three big aircraft leave one after another, the same two hours suddenly feel tight, because everyone is checking in and clearing security in the same window.

You can check this yourself before you leave for the airport. The departures in the table above carry their times: if yours sits in the middle of a cluster of international departures, give yourself the extra half hour. If it is alone in its slot, two hours is comfortable.

What is waiting twenty minutes from the runway

The reef is right there, and not in one spot only: at West Bay, West End, Las Palmas, Oak Ridge, Fantasy Island, Little French Key, Big French Key and Brady’s Key, the Mesoamerican Barrier runs a few dozen metres off the shore. You put a mask on and walk in from the beach instead of sailing an hour to reach it. That single fact is why this island is on the diving map at all.

The rest is a boat ride or a short drive away: Pigeon Cay, where you swim with nurse sharks, a brewery in the middle of the jungle, the beach clubs, and the west-end beaches the island is known for. Our guided excursions run from both sides of the island.

If you are landing to join a cruise call rather than to stay, the cruise port pages carry the ship calendar, and the Roatán guide covers the rest of the island.