el prat

Barcelona and Seoul will be connected through three direct flights per week from the 28th of April 2017. The Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, announced this Wednesday that next year Korean Air, the largest airline in South Korea, will operate three flights - on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday - with capacity for 248 passengers each. The company currently operates flights to 129 destinations in 46 countries and in 2015 registered around 25 million passengers. Baiget detailed that the negotiation process to achieve an agreement started two years ago, on a trade mission and institutional trip of the Catalan Government to South Korea, and explained that the airline will extend the frequency to four days in the future “if things work well”.  

Barcelona El Prat Airport will be connected to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Miami through direct flights operated by low-cost airline Norwegian. Thus, Barcelona will host the only direct route to San Francisco in the whole of Spain. The new connections will start working in June 2017 and from August onwards Norwegian will offer four weekly flights to New York, three to Los Angeles and San Francisco and two to Miami. In total 325,000 places will be offered in the first year, most of them, 175,000, to California. According to Norwegian’s CEO, Bjorn Kjos, the company is set to also offer other new routes from the Catalan airport. 

12.7% more passengers used Barcelona El Prat Airport’s facilities during the first half of 2016 than in the same period last year. According to data released by the Airports Council International (ACI) and adding the figures corresponding to July, 25,028,393 people used El Prat’s facilities in the first seven months of the year. Thus, Barcelona’s airport has the second-largest passenger growth in group 1, which includes those airports with more than 25 million passengers per year, only behind that of Dublin, which registered 13.4% growth. However, in June, El Prat was the European airport which saw the highest increase in the number of passengers (10%) and its pace of growth was double that of the European airport average. According to ACI these good results are mainly due to the high amount of low-cost flights operated to and from El Prat, which was double the amount operated from Madrid. Moreover, the number of movements from January to July reached 117,326, which represents 6.5% more than in the same period last year.

“We have been really focused on trying to solve it but I must admit we have failed”, stated Vueling President, Javier Sánchez-Prieto, in an interview published this Wednesday by Catalan newspaper ‘Ara’. Sánchez-Prieto conceded that mistakes were made by the Catalan low-cost airline’s management during the last weeks’ aerial chaos at Barcelona El Prat airport: Vueling cancelled more than 60 flights in the past four days and most of those flights which did operate suffered from delays, affecting nearly 78,000 passengers. A situation which was made worse by the repeated strikes of French air traffic controllers, the last of which started last Monday. “Honestly and being self-critical we should have appeared ahead of time and communicated better”, he stated. 

The leading e-commerce company plans to generate 1,500 jobs within three years of the opening of its new logistics centre, expected by autumn 2017. Amazon’s new infrastructure, which will have a surface area equivalent to that of 8 football pitches, will be located in El Prat de Llobregat, the same village where Barcelona El Prat airport is located, a municipality 10 kilometres away from Barcelona. The decision to expand its operations in the region is “not casual”, stated Amazon Spain Fulfilment’s Director of Operations, Fred Pattje and emphasised different assets besides El Prat airport such as Barcelona’s Port and “the economic sectors around the Llobregat delta”.

Emirates airline is bringing the airplane with the highest passenger capacity in the world to El Prat airport in the Catalan capital. Specifically, the plane will pass through Barcelona on the 25^th of June and on the 16^th, 29^th, and 31^st of July. It can hold 615 passengers, of which 557 will go in economy and 58 will be sat in business class, stated the CEO of Emirates in Spain, Fernando Suárez de Góngora, during lunch with the media on Wednesday. The airplane, which is a modified (to be able to hold as many passengers as possible) A-380, will use Barcelona’s international tourism as its asset: “it is a promising sign, and we are convinced it will be filled completely”, stated Góngora. Although it has apparently been “a real challenge”, according to the CEO, to completely fill the flights, Barcelona is becoming a more popular tourist destination in Asia in general and “in the Middle East in particular”. 

The American airline has started this Thursday its summer travel season launching the service between Washington-Dulles and Barcelona-El Prat airports. The flight will be offered until the 29th of October and will leave Barcelona every day at 11.15 am and arrive in Washington at 14.30 pm the same day. The return leg will take off from the United States at 18.10 in the evening and land in Barcelona at 08.05 the following morning. The Barcelona-Washington non-stop daily flight is the latest addition to the intercontinental offering from the Catalan airport, which also has connections with New York and Sao Paulo, amongst others.

Barcelona’s Port registered an 8% growth in container traffic this March in comparison to the same period last year, reaching 493,000 TEUs (one TEU = one 20ft container). Both exports and imports saw a growth of more than 5%, along with an increase in container cargo coastal trade. All in all, 11.1 million tons of merchandise were registered from January to March of 2016. This is also represented by an increase both in liquid and solid merchandise in bulk. Meanwhile, the Barcelona El Prat airport experienced a rise in passengers in the first trimester of 2016, marking 16.1% more than the same period of the previous year, at a total of 8.5 million people. Along with this, both the Girona-Costa Brava airport and Reus airport, located in the Girona and Tarragona provinces respectively, witnessed an augmentation in traffic in the month of March. 

20.4% more passengers used Barcelona El Prat Airport’s facilities this past February than in the same month last year. According to data released by the European airport trade association (ACI Europe), Barcelona’s airport leads the ranking of EU airports in terms of growth and tops group 1, which includes those airports with more than 25 million passengers per year. Dublin holds second position, with a registered growth of 17.2% in February, followed by Copenhagen (+16%) and Madrid Barajas (+15.5%). Regarding those European airports which are not within the EU, Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen is the only airport whose increase in the number of passengers surpassed that of Barcelona (24.3%). The increase in the number of passengers using El Prat is double the average growth registered for February in the EU overall, which was 10.3%. 

The Barcelona airport at El Prat de Llobregat registered an increase in almost all aspects in the month of February. Thanks to the Mobile World Congress (MWC), international passengers registered an increase of 22% while the number of domestic passengers rose by 16.9%. These numbers contributed to the 20.4% overall growth in total passengers for the month, along with a 13.3% growth in the number of operations. Compared to the same period in 2015, the amount of cargo and merchandise transported also grew, registering an increase of 18.3% and 18.6% respectively. The Catalan airport also saw an increase in annual terms, with 17.4% more passengers and 9.4% more operations than before.

The Catalan capital will host the first Amazon express delivery centre in Europe. Similar to New York’s recently opened Amazon ‘Prime Now’ delivery centre, Barcelona will have a centre to attend to customers’ demands quickerand deliver products on the same day. Amazon will establish this centre at 89 Rosselló Street, in Barcelona city. The building was previously the headquarters of the Editorial Gustavo Gili publishing house and its huge basement makes it an appropriate choice considering Amazon’s activities. This operation is to complement the creation of Amazon’s biggest logistics centre in the South of Europe, which will be built in El Prat de Llobregat, close to Barcelona El Prat Airport. 

39.7 million passengers used Barcelona’s El Prat Airport facilities this 2015, 5.7% more than last year. This figure sets a new record for El Prat, which is the second busiest airport in Spain, only beaten by Madrid Barajas. December was also a historic month, with 2,604,772 passengers whom passed through El Prat. The highest figure was registered in August 2015, were nearly 4.4 million passengers used El Prat Airport’s facilities. The passenger group which grew the most was international travellers, especially the Latin American market, which registered a 21.7% increase in comparison to last year. Regarding the number of operations registered, there were 288.878 take-offs and landings in 2015, which represents 1.8% more than in 2014. 

3,621,777 passengers used Barcelona El Prat Airport's facilities this October, 7.5% more than in the same month last year. This figure sets a new record for El Prat, which is the second busiest airport in Spain, only beaten by Madrid Barajas. Most of the users whom passed through El Prat were international passengers, which registered a 9.1% increase compared to October 2014, while the number of national passengers rose to 3.3%. Regarding the number of operations, there were 25,349 flights in October, which represents 1% more than in the same month last year, and from January to October 248,358 operations were registered in El Prat. The number of flights to/from Latin America grew the most, by 47.5%, followed by those to/from North America (up 21%) and the Middle East (up 18.8%). Cargo transportation also grew, increasing by 15.3% and totalling 11,070 tons. In terms of cargo, routes from outside the EU saw the biggest growth, 30.6%. 

United Airlines will offer a daily direct flight to connect Barcelona with Washington DC. The new route will be operative next summer, starting on the 25^th of May and continuing until the 6^th of September. The flight will depart from Barcelona El Prat airport at 11.30am each day and arrive at Dulles airport in Washington DC at 2.45pm the same day. In the opposite direction, the flight will leave Washington DC at 6.10pm and land in the Catalan capital at 2.45pm that the same day. This new connection has been announced two weeks after another new non-stop intercontinental flight started to operate to Barcelona, which has connected El Prat airport with Sao Paulo since the beginning of October. 

3,974,609 passengers used Barcelona El Prat airport in September, which represents a 4.6% growth in comparison to the same month last year. Moreover, this figure sets a new record for a month of September, according to Spanish public airport operator and air navigation service provider AENA, and pushes the total number of passengers using Barcelona El Prat airport to30,695,805 since the beginning of the year. However, El Prat was not the busiest airport in Spain; in September Madrid Barajas registered the highest number of passengers, 4,331,642, which is 11.7% higher than for the same month last year. The situation in Girona and Reus airports in Catalonia contrast with El Prat, as both continue to lose nearly 20% of their total number of passengers.