Sharjah International Airport in a nutshell
Sharjah Airport is the main low-cost airport in the United Arab Emirates and the largest headquarters of Air Arabia, a major multinational low-cost airline. Due to its location, it serves as one of the three airports of Dubai, the centre of which is located approximately 30 km to the southwest.
A large number of routes are mainly to India, Pakistan, Egypt, Sri Lanka and the countries around the Persian Gulf. Flights to Sharjah also come from North Africa, Turkey, the Balkans and Central Asia.
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I just flew with Air Arabia via Sharjah airport, so for info some observations (March 2025).
If you want out of the airport, they have conventional counters and automatic gates. If you've already been to Emirates with an existing passport, you can use the automatic gate with passport scanning. We changed planes here twice, and went out twice, and the first time I waited two hours at immigration, and the second time immigration was just completely empty.
I didn't want to rely on Uber/taxis, so I booked a ride to and from the hotel through Booking. It came out to Deira (Radisson Deira Creek) when booked about 12 hours in advance for both trips at about 1100,- and the trip took 30 minutes and the driver was always waiting, it was completely hassle free (a month before I was offered it for about 1700,-). Otherwise it was about three minutes from the hotel to the metro station (red line to Dubai Mall), so ideal location.
With a seven-hour transfer day, we didn't go anywhere through the two-hour wait at immigration, but I still felt like there was nowhere to go. But it was definitely better to wait in the public area of the airport (leather seating and empty at the Happiness Center) than in the transit area because they had extremely loud announcements every half minute, I almost didn't make it there mentally for two hours with earplugs.
Hi can I ask ..... we have a long layover in Sharjah and would like to check into a hotel. So can you leave the airport for free? I can't seem to find a coherent answer to this anywhere.
Thank you very much.
Strange. The information about visa-free entry for EU citizens to the Emirates is quite easy to find on the MFA website and is even true. Or even here. https://www.cestujlevne.com/pruv...iraty/viza
@miskasebi yes, you can leave the airport and go to the hotel. Once you pass through immigration, ignore the drivers who will direct you to their cars / black, Lexus / , instead walk on through, after you exit the terminal, cross the small road and there are official taxis on the right, they are white and blue / with a pink roof for girls only if you would like like like us :) / Smart gates also work at Sharjah - however, you don't miss physical immigration when you first arrive and the queue was really long - you need a prior visit to use the Smart gates, as Dess says
Right next to the standing taxis there is also a bus stop for buses going to the centre. There were several of them. You just have to reckon with the intensity of the traffic, the bus drove for several kilometers on a multi-lane road almost at a pace. But it would be the same when travelling by taxi. The bus has only one problem, it has no stop announcements. But on the way back, the driver shouted to us that we were at the airport :-). At immigration it was totally fine, we were out of the airport within 10 minutes, more time was taken to change money for the bus.
Speaking of transportation, which miskasebi didn't even ask about, would you rather post those findings here? It'll be easier to find and maybe someone will eventually incorporate it into a guidebook. https://www.cestujlevne.com/leti...za/doprava
....says "we'd like to go to a hotel"... teleporting there probably won't work.
I'm sorry, next time I'll put the info where it belongs.
That's not a question, it's a justification for asking to enter the Emirates. 😉 Maybe she wanted to ask, but didn't...
I spent the night at the airport a week ago, I don't know if it was worse to spend the night here or at Luton with the Romanians and Moldovans. I guess it was the same, but that's my fault :-D