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Pilar Martínez
Malaga
Tuesday, 12 September 2023, 14:54
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The seemingly never-ending queues at the check-in desks and the avalanches of passengers leaving the arrivals area at Malaga Aiport throughout August have left their mark in the latest data provided by airport operator Aena. It confirms that the facility has had the best August in its history. It did so by exceeding 2.4 million passengers, a figure that represents almost 18% more than last year and almost ten points more than the record year for this gateway to the Costa del Sol, which was 2019. A boost that brings passenger traffic in the first eight months of the year to almost fifteen million (14,921,595), which is 21.5% more than last year and 9.3% higher than the pre-pandemic year.
The statistics consolidate Malaga Airport as the fourth most important airport in the country, after Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca, and the one that leads the growth rate of large infrastructures. What is more, its growth is much higher than the national average. Suffice to say that Aena airports reached an all-time record number of passengers in August, with 29.8 million, some 9.5% more than in the same month of 2022 and 1.4% more than in 2019. The situation is repeated when analysing the accumulated figures for the first eight months of the year, in which 189 million passengers have been recorded at Spain's airports overall, representing an increase of 18.7% compared to the figures for 2022 and 1.2% compared to before the pandemic.
It is also important to note that of the top four airports in terms of traffic volume, only Malaga and Palma de Mallorca have recovered their pre-Covid-19 levels, while Madrid and Barcelona remain in the red, with drops of 3.5% and 7.2%, respectively.
International and Spanish boom
Aena stressed that "the data in Malaga, which shows a daily average of 78,034 passengers in the airport, was due to the good performance of both domestic and foreign traffic". The figures showed that international flights carried 2,007,783 users, 18.9% more than a year earlier, and added to that domestic traffic also maintained a significant growth, rising by 13.1%.
With regard to international traffic, Aena pointed out that the markets with the greatest demand in absolute terms were the British, with 615,754 passengers, followed by Germany, with 187,250, France, with 120,567, Ireland, with 115,610, and Italy, with 112,884. But it is also significant that arrivals from Portugal doubled, and traffic with Morocco grew by 50.2%.
It was not only in the terminals that intense activity was noted in August but also on the runways. The 16,945 flights that landed and took off last month fitted together like pieces of a puzzle, representing a rise of 11.8% compared to August 2022. Of these, 13,244 were to or from international airports. For the year as a whole, 107,945 landings and take-offs have been handled, 11.3% more than in the same period last year.
Operators and workers in the terminals will have noted 6 August as the busiest day of the record-breaking month, with 84,371 passengers, while in the control tower and on the runways 20 August was the peak day with 583 landings and take-offs.
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