Aena has made public the final balance of passenger traffic at Alicante Airport in 2020. December closed with 126,143 passengers, 85 percent less. A horrible end to a horrible year in which only 3,739,499 passengers have passed through the terminal; from the 15 million in 2019, that’s 75 percent less. El Altet falls one place in the national traffic ranking to sixth in Spain, surpassed by Gran Canaria.
The third wave of covid has once again sunk air traffic at the Alicante-Elche airport in January, which has also suffered the consequences of the tightening of anti-covid measures in Europe and, above all, in Great Britain from where there are no longer daily flights to the Costa Blanca. The Government has also extended, until 2nd February, the limitation on the entry of conventional tourists to the province – only residents with a negative PCR can arrive- which represents a new hurdle for the hotels that remain open, some empty of tourists on certain days of the week.
The terminals this week showed scenes reminiscent of the March confinement with just a handful of flights. The airport has had to reorganise its operations once again due to the circumstances, with a further drop in passengers being detected. There is only one filter channel for the control of travellers who access the departure lounges and many commercial establishments are still closed due to the lack of potential customers nearly one year after the start of the confinement that would end the 2020 tourist season.
The tourist crisis derived from the covid pandemic shows no sign of easing and the hoteliers of the Costa Blanca who work with the British market have now received a new blow. Jet2.com has postponed its return to the airport until 25th March due to travel restrictions in the United Kingdom. In principle, the aim of the airline was to have returned in mid-February.
Passenger traffic at the airports in the Aena network fell by 72.4 percent in 2020, equivalent to almost 200 million fewer people, due to strong restrictions on mobility to deal with covid-19, although traffic from cargo suffered somewhat less. Aena reported that the number of passengers at the end of 2020 stood at 76.06 million compared to 275.24 million in 2019. The movements of aircraft operated were 1.10 million, 53.4 percent less than a year before and 787,848 tons of cargo were transported throughout the network, 26.3 percent less.
Virtually all passengers (75.6 million) were commercial and, of them, 33.75 million made domestic flights (60.6 percent less than in 2019) and 41.89 made international routes, a 77.8 percent decrease. The fall in passenger traffic was due to restrictions on mobility both in Spain and in the rest of the world, caused by the spread of covid-19 since last March and which still persists.
By airports, the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas registered the highest number of passengers in the network, with 17.11 million and a decrease of 72.3 percent compared to 2019; followed by Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat, with 12.74 million (-75.8 percent).
In Palma de Mallorca, 6.11 million people were counted (-79.4 percent); in Malaga-Costa del Sol, 5.16 million (-74 percent); in Gran Canaria, 5.13 million (-61.3 percent); in Alicante-Elche, 3.74 million (-75.1 percent); in Tenerife South, 3.39 million (-69.6 percent) and in Tenerife North-Ciudad de la Laguna, 2.79 million (-52.1 percent).