Barcelona airport April passenger figures closing gap on 2019

The gap between the Barcelona airport passenger figures in 2019 and now continues to narrow every month.

According to official figures from Aena, the Spanish government-owned facility operator, 3,522,039 people departed from or landed in El Prat in April, the highest number of users in a single month since Covid-19 first broke out. It is also the first time the figure exceeds 3 million in one month since March 2020.

Barcelona airport was, as usual, the second most used airport in Spain, only behind Madrid, and ahead of Palma and Málaga.

The number of passengers in April was 22.1% lower than in the same month in 2019, the narrowest gap between pre- and post-pandemic figures to date, surpassing the figure in March 2022, at 2,701,372, 32% fewer than three years earlier.

For comparison, 1,983,298 passengers used the airport in February 2022, 40% fewer than in February 2020 (3,280,932), while 1,701,533 passengers were recorded in January 2022, 50% fewer than in January 2020 (3,396,470).

The April figure is a 631.2% increase compared to the same month in 2021, that is, over a seven-fold surge.

The number of operations – ie. flights, both taking off and landing – in the fourth month of this year was 24,642, which is around 80% of the comparable pre-Covid figure.

In terms of freight transport, Barcelona Airport came in third in Spain for non-passenger flights, with 12,041 tones handled in April, just 13.8% less than in 2019.

Girona and Reus

Girona-Costa Brava Airport had 100,276 passengers in April, 42.8% less than the total for the same month in 2019.

The most popular routes were to Brussels – Charleroi, London – Standsted and Weeze (near Düsseldorf).

Ryanair offers 20 routes to and from Girona airport, but this year the British airline Jet2 is also linking the northern Catalan town with eight cities. Transavia is also offering several regular flights.

Reus Airport, in the south of Catalonia, had 58,456 passengers in April, up 7.5% compared to the same month in 2019.

The airport will have flights to 23 destinations in six European countries this summer, including the UK and Ireland, operated by Ryanair, Jet2 and TUI.