According to a report by the Institute of Tourism Studies from the Ministry of Industry, 80% of the operations in Alicante are low cost. These airlines will move 3.5 million passengers in the low season.
This has helped the airport win back six hundred thousand out of the one million passengers lost in 2012 due to the crisis and the Spanair demise.
The big growth of airlines like Norwegian, Jet2.com, Ryanair and the Russian operators have led the airport to the first place in the ranking of low cost airlines
Out of 6,595,725 passengers within the first eight months in 2013, 5,280,000 flew on cheap airlines. Most of them were foreign flights, apart from the connections with Santiago de Compostela operated by Ryanair.
Iberia Express and Air Nostrum, which serve the scarce connections with Madrid, are not considered low cost airlines.
Within the first eight months of 2013 the Autonomous Region increased international passengers by 8%.
The positive figures are also expected for the winter season, when Alicante shall offer eight new destinations operated by airlines that are different from the usual ones. Norwegian will keep their two aircrafts based in Alicante connecting with 19 cities. This makes them become the second airline for the airport after Ryanair and ahead of easyJet, Air Berlin and Jet2. However, checking our Airport Statistics for Alicante in winter, this does not match with the ranking extracted from the coordinated slots.
Scandinavia, Germany and Russia consolidate the airport growth, although the British tourism keeps being their main customer. Aena expect passengers increase by 13.4% in Alicante, the most significant increase amongst the Spanish airports.
It is notable the Jet2 consolidation, with their own engineers at the airport and Vueling which keeps their connections, including all three Moscou and start Bilbao, one of the only domestic flights which keep operating, with Santiago de Compostela, Palma—operated by Air Berlin—, Madrid and Barcelona
Do not hesitate to try our Airport Statistics for a deeper analysis about this.
Source: informacion.es
