More direct flights to North American, Brazilian and European destinations

Barcelona (ACN).- The summer season has started at Barcelona El Prat Airport. The arrival of the new season will contribute to consolidating Barcelona Airport’s growth in terms of destinations, frequencies and passengers. The airline Spanair, which is partially owned by the Catalan Government and Catalan private investors, inaugurated a direct flight to Brazil’s economic capital São Paulo. The flight will be operated along with its partner Singapore Airlines and will help make Barcelona the Asian company’s hub for South-American destinations. This summer will also see Iberia come back to operate Barcelona’s intercontinental flights. Iberia quit Barcelona’s Airport five years ago to concentrate in Madrid and it closed many routes from its Catalan base and transferred other lines to a new low-cost airline. Now, Iberia is back with a direct flight to Miami three times a week (that it will run together with American Airlines and Taca Group). From 19 June, Iberia will also have two weekly flights to São Paulo. This April, Spanair also starts new flights to Berlin and Hamburg, with four and three frequencies per week respectively. In addition, it will double its number of flights to Munich, jumping from 1 to 2 flights per day.

Barcelona El Prat Airport has one strategic objective – it wants to become one of Europe’s main airport hubs. Spanair is waging for it and will work together with Star Alliance to increase the number of connections and frequencies with Barcelona. Spanair wants to set up an extensive web of European and Mediterranean destinations, with a high frequency of flights, and at a later stage, offer many intercontinental destinations. Moreover, last winter it already opened a route with Bamako (Mali), which has become very successful, and this season it started direct flights with São Paulo - three flights per week in each direction. These flights will be operated and shared with Singapore Airlines aircrafts. The Asian air company has decided to make Barcelona Airport its hub for South-American connections. Flights will go from Singapore to Barcelona to refuel, exchange passengers before continuing on to South-America. São Paulo is the first route opened, but Singapore Airlines and Spanair are already planning other destinations. In fact, from Barcelona and with other airlines, passengers can already fly directly to Mexico City, Buenos Aires or Quito, among other destinations.

Spanair considers Germany “a strategic market”, as it works closely with Lufthansa within Star Alliance. Spanair has already one flight per day with Munich and, together with Lufthansa, flights to Frankfurt. Now Spanair will double its seven weekly flights to Munich, operating two flights per day to the Bavarian capital. In addition, it inaugurated new routes to Hamburg and Berlin. Spanair will fly four times per week to the German capital and three times per week to the country’s second city. In 2010, the Catalan company transported 135,000 passengers between Barcelona and Munich. In 2011, the company foresees to transport up to 205,000 passengers between the Catalan capital and Berlin, Hamburg and Munich.

Iberia returns with intercontinental flights through Barcelona

Iberia will also open a direct connection with São Paulo from Barcelona from the 19^th June onwards. Iberia is returning its intercontinental flights to Barcelona Airport, after having quit five years ago and after having transferred its flights through Barcelona to low-cost airline Clickair. Iberia’s European flights and many flights within Spain were transferred to this low-cost company that later merged with Vueling, while its intercontinental flights were concentrated in Madrid Barajas. Now that other companies started waging for Barcelona El Prat and taking Iberia’s empty spot, Iberia decided to come back. Together with American Airlines and Taca Group, Iberia will operate three flights per week in each direction between Barcelona and Miami. Once in Miami, passengers will be able to connect with 15 other destinations, such as Houston (Texas, US), Norfolk (Virginia, US), San Juan de Puerto Rico, Cancun (Mexico), Managua (Nicaragua) and Panama.