More Airlines Add Flights to Spain
Airport management company Aena, which controls all 48 of Spain’s currently operational airports, has announced that airlines have already programmed over a million flights to and from Spanish airports for the more flights mean more growth for foreign tourism in Spain’s summer season which began on Sunday and lasts until 24th October.
This represents an increase of 3.6 percent on last summer’s figure, and at the same time the number of seats available on the flights programmed is up by 4.52 percent at 168.8 million.
Leading the way in these increases is the country’s busiest airport, Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas, where the supply of seats has gone up by 12.3 percent to over 36 million this summer, and at the same time the 32 million at Barcelona-El Prat is 5.2 percent higher than last year.
The next highest totals are the 23 million at Palma de Mallorca, 11.8 million at Málaga-Costa del Sol and 8.4 million at Alicante-Elche, although at all three of these airports the year-on-year increase is below 3 percent.
Other airports with increases in demand from airlines of over 6 percent are Menorca, Sevilla, Valencia, Jerez, Santiago de Compostela, Santander, Bilbao and Vigo.
As for the different parts of the world involved, the most spectacular increase in demand relates to the Middle East, where the total of almost 2 million seats is 36.6 percent higher than last summer.
Intercontinental seats have also risen on flights to and from Africa (14 percent higher at 2.6 million), North America (7.7 percent up at 2.6 million) and Latin America (6.9 percent higher at 4.6 million), but of course the majority of flights will be between Spain and the rest of Europe, where the total of 104 million is 2.9 percent higher than in summer 2014.
There are also scheduled to be 51 million seats available on domestic flights, 5.9 percent more than last year.
Unsurprisingly the most frequent international connections are to the UK (28.8 million seats available) and Germany (20 million seats), while the number of seats on flights to and from France rises by 12.7 percent to 9.6 million. The number of seats on flights between Spanish airports and Switzerland and Portugal has risen by 9.6 percent and 9.5 percent to 4.6 million and 2.4 million respectively.
