Airport traffic increased in April
Spain’s airports recorded an increase in traffic of 7.1% in April, when compared to the same month in the previous year, reaching a total of 18 million passengers, according to data released by Aena.
Flights to Spain continue to be popular as the cost of fuel remains low, and the instability of other tourist destinations weighs heavy on the minds of holiday makers.
By Airport
In terms of passenger numbers, Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suarez was the busiest recording more than 3.9 million passengers, an increase of 3.5% over the same month in 2015. Barcelona-EL Prat followed closely with 3.6 million passengers passing through in April, an increase of 8.8%.
Andalucía’s busiest airport, Malaga-Costa del Sol, saw traffic increase by 11.7% to reach 1.4 million passengers, and register the largest annual increase of all the Aena Airports.
Palma de Mallorca and Alicante-Elche also recorded increases in passenger numbers. In Mallorca, there were 1.8 million passengers in April an increase of 3.4%, while travellers to Alicante increased to just over 1 million, an increase of 10.2%.
The majority of the total passengers were on commercial flights (17,923,832), with over 12.5 million arriving on international flights, an increase of 8.3% over April 2015. There were a little under 5.5 million (5,404,544) domestic flights, representing an increase of 4.1%.
Airport Traffic
The number of flight operations in April (all airports within the Aena network) reached a total of 164,805 flights, registering an increase of 4.6% over the same month in 2015.
Once again, Madrid’s airport counted the majority of take-offs and landings with 30,867 registered operations, registering a slight increase of 0.7% over the same period last year. Madrid-Barajas Adolfo Suárez has now recorded continuous growth in passenger traffic for 27 consecutive months.
Barcelona saw 26,572 flights, representing an increase of 6.6%, while Malaga-Costa del Sol registered 10,535 flight operations, an increase of 8%.
Airports on the Spanish islands saw increased traffic with Palma de Mallorca registering an increase of 2.1%, while Gran Canaria saw 10.4% more traffic and the number of flights in/out of Tenerife South increased by 15.3%, reaching 5,629 flights.
Q1 2016
When looking at the first quarter of 2016 the number of passengers has increased by 12.1% to reach a staggering 60.7 million, while the number of flights has increased by 7.7% to reach a Q1 total of 571,000.
