At 10.40 am this Tuesday (8 June), an easyJet aircraft christened 'Malaga' arrived at the Costa del Sol airport, one of the three A-320 that the British company will base on the coast over the summer.

Local authorities welcomed the crew that are already part of the hundred employees generated by the new operations base.

Javier Gándara, general manager of easyJet for Spain and Southern Europe, said that the base will connect Malaga with fourteen destinations. With a new route to Birmingham, the company aims to improve connectivity for holidaymakers and business passengers.

Gándara said that "starting to talk about investment and growth is good news", although he said it would “take time to reach the levels we had before the pandemic".

“The Costa del Sol is a very attractive destination and we want to connect with more cities. The new Birmingham route is the first of many more. We believe that connectivity is a fundamental factor for tourism and for business traffic, to bring talent to Malaga that is very well positioned in the field of innovation and technology,” said Gándara.

The airline's general director in Spain and Europe forecast that "the recovery will begin this summer". This new base, in addition to those that easyJet already has in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, will play a key role in this and "consolidates the company's presence in Spain, a market that is gaining more and more weight".

The airline now has 12 aircraft based in Spain, where it employs more than 400 people under local contracts. As of 29 June it will add flights from Malaga to Birmingham in addition to offering connections to destinations such as London, Berlin, Geneva, Paris and Amsterdam, among others.

“Malaga was, until now, the most popular destination in our network that still did not have a base,” Gándara pointed out.

At the opening ceremony of the new base, a round table event was held under the title 'Reinventing tourism' in which Manuel Pablo Muñoz, of the Junta de Andalucía; Francisco Salado, president of the Malaga Provincial Council and president of Costa del Sol Tourism; Francisco de la Torre, mayor of Malaga; Pedro Bendala, director of the Malaga-Costa del Sol airport, participated.

Bendala said he values easyJet's decision and said that “this base is very important. The airport is no longer just a destination, but your home. It means that in the future there will be more flights.”

The president of Tourism Costa del Sol said, “The coast has lost nothing. We are prepared and we are better than before the pandemic. We are stronger and we are ready to go back to 2019 numbers.”

However, all those attending the event expressed concern that the United Kingdom continues to impose a quarantine on holidaymakers arriving back from Spain and hopes that the key boost to tourism will come from Boris Johnson's decision in the next review of the UK’s safe travel list on 21 June.

Putting Spain or Andalucía in green will be decisive.