Another step forward has been taken in the slot coordination process for the Summer 2015 season. During the month of January the airlines were requested to cancel all the slots that they had booked but did not intend to operate in summer 2015 in the Spanish airports. IATA establishes January 15 for such purpose and the European regulation takes January 31 into consideration for the calculation of the corresponding historical rights for the schedules at the airports. Thus, as soon as these deadlines had passed, Aecfa started to deal with the slot requests that they had received for the ad-hoc flights. In terms of slot allocation, these flights which operate only on single dates, have lower priority with regard to series of flights and that is the reason why they must remain on the coordinator’s waiting list for a little longer. Therefore, with the slot handback and the ad-hoc flights already in consideration, we have updated our airport statistics data base. This way, based on the current picture for the forthcoming summer 2015 season, your reports will be far more stable than some weeks ago.
Palma increases, but not as much as expected.
Hence, with a clearer outlook of the next summer season we have checked the expectations in Palma de Mallorca. Bearing in mind the significant capacity increase in the Palma airport we were expecting high increases of the demand there. However, only 1.26% more seats have been scheduled at this moment. 11.56 million seats have been scheduled for departures from Palma in the summer.It is worth noting the distribution per day of the week of this increase.
Saturdays have always been the most congested day of the week, with Sundays quite busy as well. Checking the current expectations for the summer, we note the demand has decreased 1.50% on Saturdays. However, it has increased 2.21% on Sundays.Surprisingly, the most significant increase corresponds to Mondays, which have received requests for 4.52% more seats. Still, it continues to be the second quietest day of the week. After Mondays, Thursdays have received requests for 3.71% more seats. The demand has increased for Fridays too, but only 0.92%. Wednesdays, remain stable with -0.12%.
Airplane seats coordinated in Palma de Mallorca. S14 v S15
Impresive numbers in Menorca
With the Palma airport holding only 1.26% more seats, and Ibiza improving figures with +2.58% to reach 3.54 million seats, the most impressive increase is expected in Menorca. For the summer of 2015, 1.62 million seats have been programmed in this airport, representing an increase of 12.25% with regard to the summer of 2014. Checking the differences with the previous season, it is interesting to see that the main two source markets, the domestic flights in Spain and the United Kingdom, have increased their demand 10.08% (to reach 742,000 seats) and 10.45% (534,000 seats) respectively. Then, far from those two, Italy has experienced an increase of 17.99% (131,000 seats) and Germany improved 15.95% (82,100).
In spite of the fact that the above mentioned amounts are very significant, the following ones have skyrocketed: France increased 71.26% (44,300 seats); Switzerland 49.75% (12,400 seats); Portugal 129.32% (10,700 seats). Also, the flights from Austria have coordinated 4,100 seats although there were no services to this country in the previous summer season. On the other hand, Sweden has 7,500 seats and Denmark 6,300. These represent reductions in demand of 20.50% and 33.11% respectively. Finally, the Russian Federation and the Slovak Republic seem to have lost connectivity with Menorca after holding 6,300 and 2,200 seats respectively last summer. Sign up to remain up-to-date with this blog.
Most significant increases in the demand for Menorca per country in Summer 15
Photo: Ciutadella de Menorca by Pablo Fernández – Flickr
