At the end of January El Altet airport had seen 12 consecutive months of declining passenger numbers showing a loss of approximately 1 million travelers in 2012. It was only the Nordic tourism boom and the slightly improved, and ever-faithful, British passenger throughput that ensured the figures weren’t even worse.
However, after a terrible 2012, which saw a reduction by Spanair of 333,000 passengers on the route to Madrid, as well as the withdrawal of regular traffic by Air Europa and the much publicized Ryanair cutbacks, Aena director, Santiago Martínez-Cava, has predicted that 2013 will see a better than expected passenger recovery.
The outlook for the season, that begins on 1st April, is very good, he says, despite the fact that there are still a number of airlines that have to present their detailed business programmes. There are others, however, that have already begun selling flights for the April / October period.
One major boost is the re-introduction of 17 destinations by Ryanair of the 18 that were previously cancelled last October. The Irish airline has announced that it will once again fly between Alicante and Bournemouth, Paris, Nuremberg, Wroclaw, Katowice, Budapest, Kaunas, Knock, Oslo, Smaland, Hausegund, Angelhoug, Kerry, Malmoe, Cork and Tampere.
Equally good news was announced simultaneously by the airline, Norwegian Air Shuttle, which is starting to slowly lift the veil on its strategy behind the massive firm order for 222 narrow body aircraft. Buoyed by a 27% increase in net profits and a 25% hike in revenue for 3Q2012, it confirmed plans to open a base of operations in Alicante in spring 2013. The airline has said that it will operate a base in Alicante with two aircraft which will connect El Altet with 20 airports in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the UK (London).
El Altet served 431,743 passengers in January, an increase of 1.8% on the same month last year. There were other national airports, however, that saw a decline in network traffic. Barajas recorded 2.9 million passengers, down 13%; Barcelona, two million, down 8%, Gran Canaria, 881 536 users, 7% fewer, Tenerife, 754,516 passengers, down 6%; Palma, 558,817 passengers, 9% down and Malaga similar to El Altet, 537,657 users, 2.4% less.
