All-time record number of passengers passed through Malaga Airport in first six months of year

Never before has Malaga Airport managed to exceed ten million passengers in the first six months of the year. The strong start to the year, together with the unprecedented numbers in April and May, when two million passengers were counted for the first time, has led to a record ten million users of this infrastructure between January and June, according to the data provided by Aena.

The operator of the airport on the Costa del Sol also highlighted that, with last month's traffic, several records have been broken by exceeding the maximum number of passengers handled and the highest number of operations managed per day in its more than one hundred years of history. Specifically, the previous highest number of daily movements dates back to 4 August 2018, with 564 landings and take-offs, a figure that was surpassed on 29 June with 569 flights, split between departures and arrivals.

Likewise, in relation to the number of passengers counted on a single day at the Malaga Airport, the previous historical maximum was seen on 30 July 2017, with 78,544. Aena pointed out that this was beaten twice last month: on Sunday 18, with 79,608 passengers, and on Sunday 25, when 80,939 passengers passed through the facilities.

It is a dizzying pace that makes the Costa del Sol airport the fastest growing of the major facilities in the Spanish airport network, with a 9.2% increase in passengers compared to the best year in history, which was 2019. These figures mean that Malaga is consolidated during this period as the fourth most important airport in Spain, highlighting that those of Madrid and Barcelona continue with lower levels than the year before the health crisis and that of Palma de Mallorca, which also precedes Malaga, added 3.8% more travellers than before the pandemic. Neither the airports Alicante, or those of Gran Canaria and Tenerife, which top the list, achieved growth like that of Malaga, with increases of 3.3%, 2.8% and 7.7%, respectively.

Aena explained that "Malaga-Costa del Sol Airport has closed the first half of 2023 with higher figures than the same period last year and 2019, the year with the highest traffic in its history. A total of 10,070,112 passengers used the Malaga infrastructure between January and June, which is 23.3% more than on the same dates in 2022". In addition, the operator highlighted the strength of international tourism and the strong pull of national tourism. "The vast majority of travellers recorded in the first half of the year travelled on commercial connections, totalling 10,048,039. Of these, 8,161,116 opted for flights abroad, which translates into an increase of 21.7% compared to 2022 and 4.8% compared to pre-pandemic records," Aena explained.

The United Kingdom, the top-placed market for passengers heading to the province, moved 2,410,951 travellers in the first semester, followed by Germany, with 703,698; Holland, with 635,208; France, with 559,553; Italy, with 459,891; and Ireland, 450,890. "These markets are, in absolute terms, the countries with the highest demand in the first six months of this year", Aena pointed out.

This is coupled with the unprecedented dynamism of domestic tourism. "The remaining 1,886,923 commercial passengers travelled to or from a Spanish city, which consolidates the strength of the domestic market by exceeding by 31.2% the records between January and June 2022 and by 34.2% the figures for the same period in 2019," the airport operator emphasised.

The airport's runways have also been affected by this historic traffic. "The number of operations handled by Malaga Airport in the first half of the year also showed positive percentages," Aena said. The Costa del Sol infrastructure managed 73,680 aircraft movements of the 64 airlines that operate to connect the Costa del Sol with direct flights to 151 destinations around the world, a figure that is 8.8% higher than the best year in history and 11% compared to the same dates in 2022. "In the international network, connections with foreign airports rose to 54,665, which represents an increase of 10.9% compared to the same months of 2022 and 5% compared to the levels of before the health crisis. The volume of flights with Spanish airports also grew, reaching 16,784, almost 20% above the accumulated between January and June before the pandemic," Aena pointed out.

A June without precedent

All this after an equally historic month of June, which maintained the trend that began in April of exceeding two million passengers. The public company puts the number of passengers carried by the airlines in that period at 2,179,575. This figure is 6% more than in 2019. Of these passengers, 1,803,151 came from or had as their destination airports located abroad. The rest were on flights connecting with the national territory.

Nationally, the airports of the Aena network closed the first half of 2023 with 129,447,124 passengers, a figure that represents a 1.2% increase compared to 2019, which confirms the strength of the Malaga infrastructure with a growth above the average for the country. The number of landings and take-offs recorded between January and June was 1,130,758, a slight 0.5% more than in 2019.

The pull of Malaga is also noticeable in the overall comparison for the month of June, with a higher rate than the average for the country. In that period a total of 26,504,920 passengers transited through Spanish airport infrastructures, 2.8% less than in 2019, compared to the 9.2% experienced on the Costa del Sol. "Demand in June has remained high, as evidenced by the high occupancy levels, which have exceeded 88%, above those of 2019 and those recorded in the first months of 2023, which hover around 85%. In June, airlines de-scheduled some flights, slightly more than in April and May, while in the sixth month of the year the schedule is similar to that of the same month in 2019", Aena detailed. And July started with the same buzz, with 2,100 flights, 10.3% more than last year.