ALICANTE – Alicante airport has welcomed just over a million passengers in the past month. That is just 25% less than in October 2019.
Miguel Hernández Airport in Alicante continues to normalise as restrictions lift and tourism slowly returns to normal. The figures for October were good news for Alicante-Elche airport with more than one million passengers. That’s just 25% less than in the same month of 2019, before the pandemic.
Main Spanish airports see improved figures
Of all the Spanish airports, Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas recorded the highest number of users, with 3,062,480. That is a decrease of 44.2% compared to October 2019.
Then Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat followed, with 2,684,992 (-42.2%). Third in terms of arrival numbers was Palma de Mallorca with 2,284,354 passengers (-21.9%). Malaga-Costa del Sol pushed Alicante’s airport into fifth place with 1,521,553 passengers, a decrease of only 18.8% compared to 2019. Alicante’s arrival figures for October showed 1,070,617 travellers.
Compare these figures to June 2021, when 12,000 passengers landed at Alicante.
Comparison to 2019
Airport authority Aena explains in a statement that due to the state of alarm it makes more sense to compare to pre-pandemic figures, i.e. 2019.
The state of alarm in Spain lasted until July 21 in 2020. The ensuing lockdowns and bans on non-essential movements, and repetitive and localised mobility restrictions across the world, means the comparison with the 2020 data is flawed.
For example, compared to 2020, the equation is a 287.1% increase in passenger numbers, Likewise, there was an increase of 84.3% in operations and 18.5% more cargo flights.
