Malaga Airport increases share and receives more than 65% of all passengers who arrive in Andalucía on a flight

The great gateway for tourism to Andalucía is Malaga Airport, which is gaining muscle after the pandemic and gaining market share in the region compared to the first five months of the record year of 2019.

The latest data from Spain's airport operator Aena shows that between January and May, 65.5% of the passengers who flew to Andalucía landed at the Costa del Sol facility. The figure is significant as the region has five airports – Malaga, Seville, Granada, Jerez de la Frontera and Almeria.

In second place, Seville handles 26% of the region's air travellers, a figure which in the last two months has been reduced by three per cent as the Costa del Sol airport has increased its share of business. Statistics for April and May show that Malaga Airport received 69% of the passengers flying into the region. Granada, Jerez and Almeria barely account for 7.5% of the region's air traffic.

Of the twelve million tourists that transited through the five Andalusian airports between January and May, almost 7.9 million landed at Malaga Airport: Seville had 3,170,00 passengers in the same period, and Granada, with 403,100 passengers. At the bottom of the list is Almeria, with 254,590 passengers at its airport, preceded by Jerez de la Frontera with 326,350.

In terms of connectivity, the differences are also striking. The Costa del Sol airport is connected to 150 destinations around the world, operated by 65 airlines. Madrid airport, which leads the national ranking, is connected to 188 cities in the world. Seville airport has 75 routes operated by 19 airlines, followed by Almeria with twenty direct connections; Jerez, with 17, and Almeria, with ten.

Growth at Malaga Airport has been unstoppable since the beginning of the year. In May, activity set a new record, when the number of passengers exceeded two million, with 2,150,259 travellers recorded. This record is in addition to the one set last April, when the number of visitors exceeded two million for the first time.

Malaga Airport operator Aena said that the data was "a milestone, as for the first time the number of monthly travellers exceeds two million in a month of May, levels that had only been reached, until this year, in the months of July and August in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2022 and, on one occasion, in June and September during the year before the pandemic. To this must be added last April, when 2,020,881 travellers were recorded".