Malta Airport to St Paul's Bay, Buġibba & Qawra (2026)

Malta Airport is about 20 km from St Paul's Bay, and the official fixed taxi fare to the whole strip – St Paul's Bay, Buġibba and Qawra – is around €28 per vehicle. The drive takes roughly 30 to 35 minutes in clear traffic, closer to 45 on a summer evening when the coast road fills up.

The three towns are treated as one destination by the taxi booth and one corridor by the buses, which makes this the easiest transfer decision on the island's north side. The cheapest way in is the TD5 bus at €3 cash, and the honest gap between the two options is about twenty minutes and the luggage.

How long does the transfer take, and what does each option cost?

Taxis and transfers charge per vehicle; buses charge per person. That single distinction decides most of these arrivals, because the bus fare multiplies with your party and the taxi fare does not.

What it costs by group size

The taxi never quite closes the gap, but it narrows faster here than on the longer runs north. For a family of four the €16 difference buys twenty minutes, a boot for the cases and a drop at the hotel door rather than a walk from a seafront bus stop.

Solo or as a couple travelling light, the arithmetic points the other way and the TD5 is the sensible choice – provided the timing works, which is the real catch covered below.

What does a taxi from Malta Airport to St Paul's Bay cost?

Budget around €28 per vehicle, and buy the ticket before you go outside. The white airport taxis run on prepaid fixed fares: you pay at the taxi booth in the Welcomers' Hall in arrivals, by cash or card, and hand the ticket to the driver at the rank. There is no meter and nothing to agree at the far end.

The fare sits where you would expect it to on the island's ladder, which is a useful sanity check when a driver quotes you something else.

Two things move the number. A flat surcharge of €4.50 per trip applies on 25 December and 1 January, and some operators add an admin fee on top of the published fare. Published figures for this strip range from €25 to €32 depending on the source, so treat €28 as the ballpark and the booth itself as the authority.

App prices to this strip often land a little under the fixed fare at quiet hours, but they move with demand and surge exactly when several flights land together. The booth price does not move at all, which is worth something at 23:00 with a luggage trolley.

Which bus goes from Malta Airport to Buġibba and Qawra?

Airport Direct route TD5 is the direct one: airport to Buġibba via Ħal Luqa, Żebbuġ, Rabat and St Paul's Bay, in about 50 minutes for €3 cash. It runs six trips a day on weekdays and five at weekends, roughly hourly in each direction.

TD1 is the alternative, at €3.50 cash, running airport to Ċirkewwa through Rabat, Buġibba and Qawra – so it serves Qawra directly, takes a little longer, and continues to the Malta to Gozo ferry at the northern tip.

• Fares: €3 cash on TD5, €3.50 cash on TD1, paid onboard by cash or contactless
• Tallinja Card: €1.50 a journey with a personalised card – but a personalised card is applied for in advance, not issued at the airport, so the cash fare is the visitor's fare in practice
• Not included: the Explore 7-day card does not cover Airport Direct routes
• Onboard: luggage space, though it is limited on a full service in August
• Frequency is the weak point: with five or six departures a day, landing at the wrong moment can mean a wait longer than the drive

The regular town buses reach the strip too, via a change at the Valletta terminus, for about €2 and well over an hour. That only makes sense if you have time and no cases.

The X1 does not exist any more

Out-of-date bus advice is the thing most likely to strand you on this route, and it is still in circulation. Bus routes X1 and X4 were withdrawn on 20 April 2025 in the network restructure that introduced the Tallinja Direct services; X2 was renumbered 211 and X3 became 214.

Guides written before that date send you to the airport bus stops looking for an X1 to St Paul's Bay that has not run for over a year. We found one still doing it while researching this page.

There is also no train, tram or metro anywhere in Malta. Searches for a rail link to Qawra turn up nothing because nothing exists – Malta's railway closed in 1931 and nothing replaced it. Your options are a road vehicle or a bus on the same roads.

St Paul's Bay, Buġibba or Qawra – which one are you in?

The three run into each other along one bay, and to the taxi booth they are one destination. To your driver on arrival they are not, so give the exact hotel name and street rather than the area.

St Paul's Bay is the older, quieter end around the parish church and the waterfront. Buġibba is the middle: the square, the promenade and most of the nightlife. Qawra curves round the far side towards the point, where the larger resort hotels sit – the Qawra Palace Resort and Spa among them – with the longest walk to the Buġibba square.

The practical consequence is a ten to fifteen minute walk with a suitcase if you are dropped at the wrong end. Our best hotels in Buġibba and St Paul's Bay guide covers which end each property actually sits on.

So which should you book?

Two of you, daytime flight, travelling light: take the TD5 if a departure falls within half an hour of your landing, and the taxi booth if it does not. At €3 a head against €28 a vehicle, the bus wins on price whenever the timing cooperates.

A family, a late landing, or peak August: pre-book. The fixed fare and the named driver remove the two things that go wrong on this route – a queue that builds when flights bank, and a drop at the wrong end of a 3 km resort strip.

Both stack up better here than they do further north, because the distance is shorter and the fare lower. For the Mellieħa run the same comparison shifts, and our Malta Airport to Mellieħa guide has that one.

If your flight is a late one or you are landing with children, book the transfer before you fly and arrival day stops being a decision at all.

For every other route off the island, the Malta airport transfers guide compares each arrival option side by side, and getting around Malta covers buses, ferries and car hire once you have settled in.