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ARCHIVED - 92 per cent drop in April passenger numbers at Alicante-Elche as the airport awaits international tourists
Traffic at the Costa Blanca airport was down from 1.3 million to 108,000
The almost total cancellation of international travel in Europe during the winter continued to have a devastating effect on Alicante-Elche airport in April, when the data published by Aena relating to passenger numbers illustrated both the effect of the Covid pandemic and the way in which statistics can occasionally throw up misleading results!
On the face of it, the number of people passing through the terminal building at El Altet during the month was an incredible 4,458 per cent higher than in April 2020, a year-on-year increase which in normal circumstances would be viewed as a triumph. But the reality, of course, is that April 2020 was the first month in which air travel – and indeed all travel - was practically non-existent due to the pandemic, and that the increase from 2,378 passengers to 108,382 is actually a relatively insignificant one.
Far more revealing is the comparison with April 2019, when those arriving and leaving the airport numbered 1.34 million: in other words, the figures are down by a devastating 91.9 per cent.
Neither is Alicante-Elche the only airport suffering; the neighbouring Region of Murcia International Airport lost 98.1 per cent of its traffic in April in comparison with the figures from 2019, and the decrease in the whole of the Aena network in Spain amounted to 84.2 per cent compared to two years ago.
With no international airlines resuming normal service as yet it seems unlikely that the airport will become the hive of activity it was prior to the pandemic at least until the summer, and even then flights and passenger numbers will still be subject to restrictions if the need arises, and there is still some uncertainty over exactly how the “health passports” will work.
In Spain as a whole, Aena reports that the number of passengers arriving and departing on both international and domestic flights during the first four months of 2021 reached 11.9 million, representing a decrease of 84.3 per cent from the year before last. The busiest airports were, as ever, those of Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas (3.56 million passengers after a fall of 80.8 per cent since 2019) and Barcelona El Prat (down by 89.3 per cent to 1.6 million).