ARCHIVED - Corvera airport lost over 47,000 passengers in first months of operation

The regional media has reported new routes for summer 2020 today, although the story is actually a month old

Sadly, there have been no further announcements regarding new routes lately.

The new international airport of the Region of Murcia at Corvera is coping well with its first summer of operations, the only complaint heard frequently amongst users being the lack of flights and limited number of routes, forcing travellers trying to reach the Murcia region to use the airport at Alicante instead.

Although nobody expected the change of airport to generate the same passenger numbers as the old airport at san Javier in its first year, the lack of routes is frustrating for travellers forced to either drive an additional hour in most cases or pay higher transfer costs in others, and as the year continues, the numbers of passengers “lost” in the transfer continues to grow.

In the first four and a half months since its opening on 15th January 353,304 passengers have used Corvera airport, compared to around 401,000 San Javier during the same period of 2018, a “loss” of over 47,000 even taking into account the 21,000 who used san Javier airport before it closed in January.

It is difficult to say definitively how many of these passengers have used Alicante airport as an alternative, but traffic at Alicante has increased to 5,307,808, during this same period, a whopping 401,857 passengers more using this airport in 2019 when comparing the figure for 2018, which is 4,905,951 passengers, an increase of 8.2% in the first five months of 2019.

Once the June figures are added in, the loss rises to just under 68,000 passengers, 67,808 less to be exact,taking into account the 21,000 passengers who used San javier before it closed to traffic in January.

The regional tourism board and concessionary Aena have been working to increase the number of routes through Corvera airport for the winter season and summer 2020 and maintain that they had expected a decrease during the first few months of operations at the new airport which currently offers 22 destinations, the majority of them to and from the UK.

There are routes to Asturias and Palma de Mallorca currently on offer, and the regional development Consejería hopes to add a route to Barcelona following negotiations with Vueling, a study indicating that sufficient demand exists for such a service, although at the moment there has been no confirmation that the negotiations have concluded successfully.

Airlines are currently preparing summer route schedules for next summer and in the middle of June Jet2 announced that it would increase its Spanish flights by 10% next summer, Murcia and Almería airports amongst those to benefit from increased flights to London and Birmingham.

Currently the airline offers flights to Murcia from Leeds Bradford and Manchester, having taken the decision not to continue the Newcastle and Edinburgh flights formerly offered at san Javier airport before it closed.

Regional newspaper La Verdad has reported the additional flights in today’s edition, a month after the news was first published about the flights for next summer which are already on sale via the company’s website.