The long-haul offer at Barcelona airport is intensifying, especially with America. United Airlines joins the fight for this market that is being waged in El Prat with a new flight that will connect the Catalan capital with San Francisco every day starting in May 2024. For now the connection will be seasonal – for a few months a year –, but it is fully entering into competition with Level, the only company that until now flew between the two cities, in its case, four times a week. San Francisco Airport is also one of United’s main bases of operations.
The movement is significant because numerous airlines are betting on the connection between El Prat and the American continent, a business that Level is currently leading and that IAG is trying to protect. The group led by Luis Gallego recently announced its intention to increase the fleet of the Barcelona-based airline with three more aircraft by 2026 and thus reinforce its flights to New York, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Buenos Aires or Santiago de Chile.
In parallel, United launches this new route with the Californian city and increases the number of seats between Barcelona and the United States by around 20% from the middle of next spring. The company also inaugurated this year the Barcelona-Chicago route, to which is added the connection with Washington D.C. and New York/Newark (the latter all year round).
Delta, for its part, also plans to improve its offer from Barcelona, ??while American Airlines will add a new destination to El Prat starting next year. The airline will connect Barcelona with Dallas for the first time, in addition to flying to Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami and New York.
All this commitment has translated into an increase in North American travelers in Barcelona. Last summer season the United States led the offer of long-haul seats from El Prat, with 587,994 seats, according to data from the Barcelona Air Traffic Observatory, prepared by the Chamber of Commerce, and for this Christmas campaign the Catalan capital was It ranks as the sixth European destination preferred by Americans, according to an analysis by Allianz Partners.
Among the seven airlines with the highest passenger traffic on intercontinental flights, four companies from North America also stand out. Level is in the lead, followed by Emirates, American Airlines, Qatar Airways, United, Delta and Air Canada, Aena data indicates.