ARCHIVED - 18,000 passengers fewer at Corvera airport during September

2019 passenger numbers are down by almost 120,000 following the move from San Javier as the dependence on UK flights continues

It is now universally accepted that the opening of the new Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera in January 2019 coincided with a drop in passenger numbers compared with the 2018 data at the airport of San Javier, and the figures for September which were published by Aena on Wednesday show a continuation of the downward trend that has marked the summer flight schedules.

During September the number of passengers passing through the terminal building at Corvera was 130,535representing a “loss” of 18,424 travellers (or 12.4 per cent) compared to the same month last year at San Javier. This is the sharpest fall since June and was certainly caused in part by the closure of the airport and the re-routing of some flights to Alicante-Elche at the height of the gota fría storm and flooding in the middle of the month.

The cumulative total for 2019 now stands at 926,387 (including the first fortnight when 21,559 people were on board the flights still taking off and landing at San Javier), almost 120,000 (or 11.5 per cent) fewer than at the same point of last year.

The data also show that this June there were 898 flights at Corvera as opposed to 989 at San Javier last September, a decrease of 9.2 per cent.

To add to the disappointment, the September figures for the Murcia airport come in the context of a nationwide increase of a 3.4 per cent at all of the airports managed by Aena in Spain. This brought the overall passenger total up to 27.14 million during the month, with increases reported at most of the country’s busiest airports including Alicante-Elche, where a rise of 8.5 per cent took the total up to 1,552,541.

One aspect of the September data at Corvera which did not change was the dominance of flights between the Costa Cálida and the UK and Ireland on the arrivals and departures boards. Passengers on UK-Murcia flights accounted for 77.9 per cent of the overall total, with the bulk of the rest travelling on the services to and from Dublin (7.5 per cent), the Czech Republic (3.7 per cent), Belgium (3.3 per cent), and domestic flights within Spain (4.5 per cent). The only other meaningful contributions were the flights to and from Norway (1.85 per cent) and Poland (1.2 per cent), and as has been the case throughout this year the absence of airports in the Netherlands and Germany from the arrivals and departures boards at Corvera is particularly noticeable.

At this point last year each of these countries was contributing just over 2 per cent of the total, and while one of the aims of the Region of Murcia tourism authorities is to diversify in terms of encouraging visitors from more countries, at the airport the dominance of the British Isles is as pronounced as it has been for many years.

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