By Mike Malik, Chief Marketing Officer at Cirium
If you’re an airline based in Spain, or flies to Spain, this is your favorite time of year. It’s the summer peak tourist season! In July alone, airlines are scheduled to operate more than 94,000 flights to and from Spanish airports, offering more than 16m seats.
Those figures are from Cirium Diio, our industry-leading airline analytics system. Across the whole world, only five other countries (the U.S., China, India, the U.K., and Japan) will have more airline seat capacity than Spain this summer.
The Spanish market is now largely back to where it was pre-pandemic in terms of capacity. For the upcoming July-to-September quarter, total scheduled flights from Spanish airports are down 1% from the same quarter in 2019.
Seat capacity, however, is up 1%. Comparing this summer to last year, flights and seats are up about 7% and 8%, respectively.
Trends vary by market. Barcelona, which hosts this year’s Airports Council International Annual General Assembly, is the least recovered of Spain’s major markets, with third quarter seat capacity still down by double digits from pre-pandemic levels. As an analysis of Cirium Diio data makes clear, this decline is due to several factors, including capacity cuts by low-cost carriers like EasyJet, the bankruptcy of Norwegian Air, and the loss of air service from Russia. Some airlines are growing in Barcelona, however, including Ryanair and Volotea.
Madrid, Spain’s capital city and largest airline market, is also less busy today than it was in 2019. Madrid is another place where EasyJet has cut a lot of capacity.
Iberia also has fewer seats from Madrid, in part because it’s flying less capacity on the Madrid-Barcelona route. Its seat capacity is up slightly though, if you include Iberia Express, its low-cost affiliate.
Many of Spain’s popular beach markets, by contrast, are busier today than they were before the pandemic. This is true of Palma, Malaga, Ibiza, and the Canary Islands. These are markets mostly unaffected by the decline in business traffic that many airlines have seen since the pandemic.
One unique feature about Spain’s airline market is its ties to Latin America. Diio shows scheduled flights from Spain to 27 different Latin American airports. Madrid-Bogotá is the busiest of these routes, served by Iberia, Air Europa, Plus Ultra, and Columbia’s Avianca. Avianca flies from Bogotá to Barcelona as well.
The Spain-to-Latin America market is a top priority for IAG, the owner of Iberia. IAG has a contract to buy Air Europa if regulators allow. Vueling, which operates mostly within Europe, is part of IAG too. So is Level, a longhaul low-cost carrier from Barcelona flying to a few cities in North and South America.
The skies over the North Atlantic will be busy from Spain this summer. Diio shows flights to 16 different airports in the U.S. and Canada. Airlines will fly from Spain to 26 different airports in Africa, many in nearby North Africa, and another 10 in the Middle East. The Spain-to-Far East Asia market is rather small, with nonstops to just Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Singapore, Hangzhou, and Chongqing. Surprisingly, there are currently no nonstop flights from Spain to India.
What’s also surprising is that Iberia is not Spain’s largest airline, at least measured by seats this quarter. The country’s largest airline is Ryanair, offering more than twice as many seats!
Which new airlines will come to Spain? Where will Spanish airlines like Iberia, Vueling, and Air Europa fly next? Cirium will be keeping current on all the latest data!
In conclusion, it is worth emphasizing that Spain’s airlines have demonstrated exceptional operational performance. Iberia, Air Europa, Iberia Express, and Vueling Airlines stood out in 2022, with Iberia earning the prestigious accolade for Europe’s most on-time airline. The positive trend appears to persist into 2023, as evidenced by ongoing outstanding performance.
