In March of last year Vueling was about to catch Ryanair as the main operator in the Spanish airports. This morning, thirteen months later, Preferente.com informed that Ryanair doubled their advantage with regard to the Spanish airline. They served 1.4 million more passengers than Vueling between January and March 2015. This nearly doubles the 800,000 passenger difference they had over Vueling within the first quarter of 2014. So far this year, Ryanair has transported 4.7 million passengers, which is a 870,000 passenger increase (22.8%). Vueling has transported 3.2 million travelers, up 250,000 passengers (8.2%) with regard to the same period in 2013.
After them, Iberia has experienced 10% passenger growth reaching 2.6 million. Air Nostrum continues the upward trend with + 12.7% reaching 925,000 passengers between January and March. Meanwhile, Iberia Express experienced the most significant growth with + 19% and 820,000 passengers. As for Air Europa, they had positive numbers too: they transported 2.2 million passengers (+7.9%). EasyJet remains stable with 1.9 million passengers, while Air Berlin transported 1.3 million hence losing 4.1% of its traffic.
Norwegian keeps growing
During the last couple of years, Norwegian has been increasing its figures again and again. In the above mentioned article, Preferente.com confirms that Norwegian has kept the same trend and improved its numbers with +9.5%, exceeding the million passengers transported from January to March.
Checking the 2014 final data published by Aena, Norwegian had, by far, the most significant passenger increase among all the airlines which transported more than 3 million passengers during the year. Taking the full year into consideration, it is worth noting that Ryanair lost 2.25%, Vueling gained 14.41%, Air Europa 7.84%, Air Berlin -4.97%, Jet2 11.08% and Lufthansa -11.58%.
Airline traffic evolution 2013 v 2014. Airlines with more than 3 million passengers
Photo: Strait of Gibraltar view from a Ryanair’s plane / flickr.com
