Barcelona Airport allots €46.6m service for passengers with reduced mobility

The Barcelona Airport has awarded its service to help passengers with reduced mobility to the Sagital Multiservicios Aeroportuarios company for 46.6 million euros. The license to provide the service is for four years, with the possibility of extending it by mutual agreement for a further two years.

The service in Barcelona Airport attended to some 162,000 passengers with reduced mobility in 2016. Reus Airport, in southern Catalonia, will also receive the same amount to allocate its own service for passengers with special needs. All the airports in the Aena network with commercial flights are required by EU law to provide the service for free.

First UK skiers arrive at Lleida-Alguaire

Also on Tuesday, the Lleida-Alguaire Airport, which serves western Catalonia and the Pyrenees, welcomed the season’s first skiers from the UK. In late December, bad weather forced flights bringing skiers for the opening of the ski season to be diverted to Reus Airport.

Yet, the fine weather on Tuesday allowed 720 British skiers, arriving from the Manchester and London-Gatwick airports, to land safely at the Lleida-Alguaire Airport. In fact the two planes arrived 20 minutes early, landing at around 9am. In the evening, two more planes were expected, bringing skiers from the London-Stansted and East Midlands airports.

The head of the Neilson tour operator, Ian Archer, said that an extra 5% in the number of passengers were expected this season, with 11,500 UK skiers expected to have landed at Alguaire by the end of March. Most of the skiers on Tuesday were headed to resorts in Andorra, with 250 making for the Baqueira Beret resort in the Aran Valley.