Air activity continues to grow despite inflation and economic uncertainty. The latest Aena data for the month of January corroborate the good feelings, and even surprise the vast majority of airlines: the economic slowdown does not affect the demand to fly for the moment, which is beginning to exceed the levels of 2019, a record year for travelers in Spain.
Spanish airports registered 16.93 million passengers in January, 2.1% more than in the same month of 2019 and 62.7% higher than the data for January 2022. In January, 156,500 aircraft movements were operated , which represents a recovery of 95.1% compared to January 2019, and 74,547 tons of merchandise were moved, 96.4% over the level of four years ago.
Among the large airports, El Prat is the only one that does not exceed the pre-pandemic figures, although it reaches its best month of activity since the health crisis broke out and is close to the 2019 record. 3.07 million passengers passed through the Barcelona facility in January passengers, 6% less compared to the same month of 2019 and 80.9% more than the first month of 2022. The lack of recovery of flights with Asia, the closure of Russia and Brexit have taken a greater toll on El Prat than in other large airports, such as Barajas. The Russian company Aeroflot, Korean Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Air China or the Ukrainian airline brought thousands of passengers to Barcelona in January 2019. Vueling continues to be the leading company in the Catalan capital, with 1,259,688 passengers carried, somewhat above the figures of four years ago. Ryanair and Iberia (including Level) have also made progress this past month in El Prat, while easyJet has disappeared from the top 5 airlines with the most activity there. The Hungarian low cost Wizz Air has taken advantage and in January it was already the fourth airline with the best records in Barcelona (more than 130,000 passengers).
The worst figures are for the Reus and Girona airports. The first barely transported 391 passengers this January, 93% less than in 2019, due to the departure of Ryanair during the winter season at this airport and the disappearance of Thomas Cook, which in the first month of 2019 was the second operator there . The Irish airline will resume flights from Reus from March.
As for Girona, it reached 14,320 travelers this January, 61 points away from the same pre-covid month. Ryanair, the first airline at this airport, has reduced its activity and has gone from transporting more than 31,000 passengers in 2019 to nearly 14,000 this year.
Barajas remains the leading Spanish airport in terms of passengers, with 4,433,209 in January, 1.1% more than in 2019. At the Madrid airport, both Iberia and Air Europa and Iberia Express are growing in activity. Gran Canaria, with 1.2 million passengers and an increase of 2% compared to 2019, Málaga-Costa del Sol (1.12 million passengers and 10.5% more), Tenerife Sur (1.1 million, a 7.3%) and Palma de Mallorca (858,580 and 2.3% more), complete the list of airports with the greatest activity.
