In this new blog entry we want to analyze the main spanish airports according to the growth trend they have had in recent years in the areas of passenger traffic flow, operations and freight.
Main Spanish airports in passenger traffic:
As you can imagine, Madrid and Barcelona airports are in the first positions in terms of passenger traffic flow.
The airports of Mallorca and Málaga Costa del Sol, all of them with growth figures for 2019 and early 2020, occupy third and fourth place respectively.
In fifth place is the Alicante-Elche airport, which has the highest percentage of growth (7.6%) in 2019 compared to 2018; it is also among the 50 busiest airports in Europe.
Main Spanish airports in terms of operational traffic
In the TOP5 of those with the highest number of operations, the positions remain very similar to those of passenger traffic. In fact the only variation is shown in the fifth position, where the airport of Gran Canaria surpasses that of Alicante – Elche.
The most relevant data is the decreasing trend in the number of operations in 2019 over 2018 at the airports of Palma de Mallorca (-1.4%) and Gran Canaria (-3.5%).
In any case, the figure may be misleading in Palma de Mallorca, since although the number of operations has decreased, aircraft occupancy has increased, so that passenger traffic was higher in 2019 than in 2018* at the Balearic airport, which did not happen in Gran Canaria.
Main airports in Spain in terms of freight traffic
Firstly, there is still the Adolfo Suárez Madrid – Barajas airport, but secondly the Zaragoza airport which exceeds the Barcelona airport in tonnage but not in added value of the goods. This is due to the fact that while Zaragoza depends heavily on the textile sector (headed by the freight of Inditex, the firm of Amancio Ortega) which offers high tonnage loads, the Barcelona airport is focused on the pharmaceutical sector – El Prat has a refrigerated area – and technology which provides much lighter weight freight, although often of greater economic value.
Zaragoza airport is growing at a rate of 25% per year in terms of goods and is expected to continue multiplying its importance, also in terms of passengers. During the health crisis The air infrastructure of Zaragoza airport has become a key airport, thanks to the assignment by Inditex of its weekly Asian flights to transport medical equipment.
In third place, Barcelona airport also grew by 2.5% during 2019, followed by Vitoria airport (3.7%), which since 1993 has specialised in goods traffic, thanks to the fact that several companies chose it as a point of arrival for perishable goods and as a distribution base for parcels. Finally, in fifth place is the airport of Gran Canaria (2.4%).
The statistical data included in this article have been taken from the annual report prepared by Aena.
http://www.aena.es/csee/ccurl/787/753/Anual2019_prov.pdf
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