The Costa del Sol has Spain's fastest-growing airport

Malaga is outstripping other large airports in Spain. The statistics show that the Costa del Sol has one of the few airports in the Aena network that are maintaining a high rate of growth. Madrid and Barcelona, the biggest two, are yet to get back to levels last seen before the pandemic. Aena has put this upward trend at Malaga Airport down to "the good performance of both international and national traffic".

The 18.3% growth in passengers in October compared to the last year before the pandemic contrasts with the slower growth rates at other leading airports such as Madrid, Barcelona or Palma de Mallorca, which has got back to its pre-pandemic levels, but is only growing at 12%.

Next after Malaga in the ranking and fifth airport in terms of passenger volume in the country, Alicante has seen an increase of 11%, while Gran Canaria and Tenerife have increased at a rate of 12.5% and 14.7% respectively.

Aena has confirmed that the record numbers of visitors being seen in Spain this year correlates with its data on arrivals at airports across the country; these handled 26.6 million passengers in October alone, 11% up on last year and almost 8% more than in 2019.

In total, 243.2 million people have passed through Spanish airports in the first ten months of this year, 17% more than in 2022 and almost 2% above the record figure recorded before the pandemic.