The Spanish airports of the Aena network closed January 2023 with more than 16.9 million passengers. These passenger numbers exceed the figures for the same month of 2019, the year before the pandemic, by 2.1%. The increase compared to January 2022 is 62.7%. They handled 156,500 aircraft movements. And that represents a 98.1% recovery from 2019 and an 18.7% increase compared to 2022.
Of the total number of commercial passengers (over 16.8 million), more than 10.7 million travellers flew international flights. This represents a 99.2% recovery compared to January 2019 and is 72.1% more than in 2022. The recovery was greatest on domestic flights. Within Spain, 6.13 million passengers travelled. This is 7.3% more than before the pandemic in 2019 and 49.3% more than in 2022.
Number of passengers by airport
Madrid-Barajas airport recorded the highest number of passengers in the first month of the year. Over 4.4 million passengers landed and departed, up 1.1% compared to January 2019. Barcelona-El Prat follows with over 3 million passengers (-6% vs 2019). Next come Gran Canaria, with over 1.2 million (+2%), Málaga with over 1.1 million (+10.5%), Tenerife South with over 1 million (+7.3%), Palma de Mallorca with 858,580 (+2.3%), Alicante met 795,148 (+1.3%) and Lanzarote, with 627,992 passengers (+10.3%).
Number of flights
Also in terms of the number of flights in January, Madrid-Barajas led the list with 30,333 flights (-7.8%). Barcelona-El Prat followed with 20,928 flights (-12.8%), Gran Canaria, with 11,049 (-3.1%); Málaga with 9,023 (+5.8%), Palma de Mallorca with 8,356 (-1.3%) and Tenerife Sur with 7,503 (+10.7%).
Also read: Spanish minister optimistic about International tourism in Spain during 2023
