Last week ABC.es reported on the opening of a new base for EasyJet at the Barcelona El Prat airport. This is the British low cost’s second attempt at establishing a base in Spain after their first try in Madrid, which they later pulled out of. The director general of EasyJet in Spain, Javier Gándara, said that Barcelona’s case is very distinct from that of Madrid. He mentioned that Barcelona “is a market that the company knows very well, since it is the non-base airport that we fly to the most”.
EasyJet will be using Barcelona as a base starting in February 2016. This opening will create 120 new jobs, mostly pilots and cabin crew. That brings the total EasyJet staff in Barcelona to 250 employees. The company will have three Airbus A320’s at the new base. This will allow them to give more services to business passengers, which account for 20% of their traffic, by offering earlier and later flights that make a one day round trip possible. The company is unsure as to whether or not they will open new routes.
According to ABC.es, the company “began to fly to Barcelona in 1996 and now connects the city with 14 European airports, transporting more that 2.8 million passengers per year”. The director of the Barcelona airport, Sonia Corrochano, assured that EasyJet is the second largest company in T-2 and the third largest in the airport. Regarding recent governmental changes after the Catalonian autonomic elections Gándara assured that they are an airline dedicated to transporting passengers and that they can adapt to the circumstances around them.
Photo: EasyJet above Barcelona by Victor – flickr
