» Germanwings increased passengers by 70%

Aena published the official airport statistics for August. The overall figures are totally different from what they were in September 2013. Between January and August 2014 the airlines have increased traffic by 4.52% with regard to the same period last year. Among the most significant increases, Germanwings gained passengers by 69.35%.

You may remember our analysis for the period Jan-Aug 2013 vs Jan-Aug 2012, when IAG had lost 1.6 million passengers and Ryanair 2.3 million. Within that period of 2013, the Spanish airports had lost passengers by 5.09%. Hence, the above mention increase is doubly significant.

Going through the figures in detail, we find some airlines which had big passenger increases. On the other hand, there are others which loss is worth noting.

Germanwings impressive growth

Leading the list of traffic increases we find Germanwings. They served 753,971 passengers from Jan to Aug 2013 and have increased to 1,276,835 in the same period this year. This increase represents as much as 69.35%.

Hosteltur, in a piece of news this morning, informed that they are working to increase traffic even beyond. Germanwings, announced they will operate 254 routes in the next summer, including 98 weekly flights to Palma de Mallorca and 52 to Barcelona. The new strategy would be ready for March 29 2015.

Norwegian, as expected

After Germanwings, the second highest increase corresponds to Norwegian. They served 3,154,359 passengers so far this year. This means an increase of 52.38% against 2013. This is not something new: we were already expecting these strong increases since June 2013, when we informed that they would help Aena fight the easyJet and Rayanair duopoly. At that time, they had already increased 52.5% with regard to 2012.

Other traffic increases

Another increase to be noted is Vueling. They have transported 18,347,590 passengers so far in 2014. This represents an increase of 15.67%.

Air Europa gained traffic by 9.03%, serving 10,026,878 passengers. They had already announced increases.

Scandinavian Airlines, Jet2.com and Jetairfly had also significant increases by 19.31%, 15.20% and 10.76% respectively.

Ryanair and Air Berlin lost traffic

However, there are other airlines which continue to lose passengers. Ryanair decreased from 22,468,174 to 21,470,946 (4.44%). Nevertheless, they seem to have changed trends in August. They lost a lot of traffic between January and March. Between April and July they operated about the same traffic as in 2013. But in August they have gained passengers by 2.03% with regard to the month of August 2013.

Air Berlin has lost passengers too. They have transported 6,481,571 passengers so far in 2014, which means a decrease of 6.26%.

Lufthansa served 2,216,061 between January and August, losing 9.21% of their activity in the Spanish airports. The Germanwings increase, at the same time as the Lufthansa decrease recalls the behaviour of Iberia and Vueling last year.

Photo: Germanwings A319 together with Air Belin and Lufthansa in December 2012 / Aero Icarus

Source: Aena