Flying to Dakar on a budget
Dakar is a mid-sized city served by 1 airport in Senegal. Across the city's airports, around 20 airlines operate roughly 67 documented route pairings, connecting Dakar to approximately 25 direct destinations worldwide. For budget travellers, having multiple airports in one city is usually good news. Secondary airports tend to host the lowest-cost carriers and the cheapest fares, but the trade-off is a slower (and sometimes pricier) ground transfer to the city centre.
The cheapest combination of base fare plus ground transport almost never lives at the same airport. As a rule of thumb, fly into the most-served airport when you have luggage, late arrival times, or a fixed work meeting. Fly into the cheapest secondary airport when you are travelling light, have flexible plans, and are arriving mid-day with the buses still running. We break down the airports below in order of route volume, so you can quickly see which carriers and destinations each one specialises in.
Airports serving Dakar
Tips for landing in Dakar cheap
- Compare airports before booking. The headline-cheapest fare into the secondary airport is sometimes wiped out by a EUR 20+ ground transfer to the city centre.
- Check the last public-transport time. Late arrivals can force a pricey taxi if you miss the bus or train; verify against the inbound landing time, not the scheduled.
- Pre-book ground transport for arrival. A pre-paid bus ticket bought online is usually the cheapest predictable option; airport-counter taxi rates can run two to three times the metered fare.
- If you have multiple airports, fly in and out of different ones. Use Google Flights' multi-city search to capture the cheapest combination of one-ways across two airports.
- Watch for currency exchange traps. The airport bureaux are the worst place to change money; withdraw from a major-bank ATM in arrivals instead.
Top destinations from Dakar
| Code | City | Country |
|---|---|---|
| CKY | Conakry | Guinea |
| BKO | Bamako | Mali |
| BRU | Brussels | Belgium |
| BJL | Banjul | Gambia |
| ACC | Accra | Ghana |
| LPA | Gran Canaria | Spain |
| ABJ | Abidjan | Cote d'Ivoire |
| IAD | Washington | United States |
| JNB | Johannesburg | South Africa |
| FNA | Freetown | Sierra Leone |
| OXB | Bissau | Guinea-Bissau |
| CDG | Paris | France |
| COO | Cotonou | Benin |
| NKC | Nouakschott | Mauritania |
| RAI | Praia, Santiago Island | Cape Verde |
| BCN | Barcelona | Spain |
| MAD | Madrid | Spain |
| OUA | Ouagadougou | Burkina Faso |
| DLA | Douala | Cameroon |
| LOS | Lagos | Nigeria |
Airlines flying from Dakar
American Airlines (AA)
United States
United Airlines (UA)
United States
US Airways (US)
United States
Air France (AF)
France
Lufthansa Cargo (LH)
Germany
Alitalia (AZ)
Italy · Budget
Iberia Airlines (IB)
Spain
Air Canada (AC)
Canada
Ethiopian Airlines (ET)
Ethiopia
Royal Air Maroc (AT)
Morocco
Air Algerie (AH)
Algeria
South African Airways (SA)
South Africa
Brussels Airlines (SN)
Belgium
Kenya Airways (KQ)
Kenya
World Scale Airlines (W3)
United States
Binter Canarias (NT)
Spain
Senegal Airlines (DN)
Senegal
Atlant-Soyuz Airlines (3G)
Russia