Air passenger travel increases in the Canaries

There has been a significant increase in the amount of air travel in the Canary Islands with the Gran Canaria airport beating its records with 10.5 million passengers (an increase of 11.1%) during the 2011 period and positioning itself in 5th place in Spain, according to figures release by AENA. The airport of Fuerteventura saw a rise of 18.6% handling 4.9 million passengers as did Tenerife Souths Reina Sofia airport, with 8.6 million passengers (17.6% increase). Lanzarote also saw its air passenger numbers increase by 12.3%.

Nationally, the AENA airports received more than 204 million passengers in 2011, representing a 6% increase over the previous year, the second highest in history after the record of 210 million in 2007. This is the third consecutive year of increases in the total number of passengers over the network (over 187 million in 2009 and 192 million in 2010). Apart from increases in the Canary Island airports, there were other well performing airports such as Barcelona-El Prat, which has broken its record with 34.3 million passengers. There were also record numbers in Alicante (9.9 million), Ibiza (5.6 million), Seville (4.9 million) and Santander (1.1 million). Of the total of 204.3 million passengers which used the airports during 2011, 203.2 million were commercial flights (+6%) and of these, 76.2 million were domestic flights ( -0.6%) and 127 million international flights (+10.4%).

The Madrid-Barajas Airport holds the passenger record over the whole of the AENA network, with 49.6 million (-0.4%), followed by Barcelona airport with 34.3 million passengers (+17, 8%), Palma de Mallorca with 22.7 million (+7.6%), Malaga, Costa del Sol with 12.8 million (+6.3%), Gran Canaria, with 10.5 million (+11.1%), Alicante with 9.9 million (+5.7%) and Tenerife South with 8.6 million (+17.6%).