18% more passengers in Barcelona’s airport this October

Barcelona (ACN).- Barcelona’s airport registered 2,798,661 passengers in October, which represents 18% more than the same month of 2009. People travelling a foreign destination or coming from abroad had a 22.6% increase. Passengers on flights within Spain increased by 11%. These figures confirm a recovery from the economic crisis, as in the last 2 years passenger figures slightly dropped. The stats also confirm a trend in attracting more international passengers. Barcelona’s airport has seen 12 consecutive months of passenger increases, with the exception of last April, when the ash cloud coming from Iceland paralysed Europe’s skyway for 2 weeks. However, in other Catalan airports, passenger numbers drop.

Passengers dropped 4% in the Girona airport and 16.5% in Reus. This drop is due to Ryanair’s reduction of flights from this airport after the low-cost airline started operating from Barcelona’s airport as well.

In the first 10 months of 2010, the Barcelona-El Prat airport received 24,812,918 passengers, increasing its figure by 5.7%. International traffic increased in that period by 7%, while traffic within Spain did so by 3.7%. Companies such as US Airways, Avianca, Singapore Airlines, Aeromexico, Aerolíneas Argentinas, Pakistan Airlines, and Royal Air Maroc have seen considerable increases. In addition, Qatar Airways and Air Canada have started operating from the Barcelona- El Prat airport.

In October, 25,667 planes took off or landed in Barcelona, which represents an increase of 8.9% in the number of operations. The year 2010’s total at the end of October saw the airport has reach 233,320 flight operations, 1.7% less than the previous period. The April paralysis due to the Icelandic volcano ash cloud explains this small drop.

Regarding cargo flights, the Barcelona Airport managed more than 9.2 million kilos in October 2010, which is a 3.9% more than in October 2009. For the first 10 months, more than 86.6 millions of freight went through the airport, which represents a 19.2% increase in relation to the same period of 2009.