ARCHIVED - Passenger numbers at Corvera airport 94 per cent down in December

Across Spain, Aena lost 200 million passengers and traffic fell by 72% this year

The number of people flying to and from Murcia in the whole of 2020 fell by 80 per cent

One of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic has been that 2020 was a disastrous year for international tourism and for airlines, with restrictions on travel bringing about a drastic reduction in the number of flights and passengers, and the figures published this week by Aena in relation to the month of December further illustrate the way in which the sector has been almost obliterated since the spring.

During the final month of the year just 3.82 million people flew into or out of Spanish airports, and although this was more than in November it still represents a decrease of over 79 per cent in comparison with December 2019. Unsurprisingly, the fall was most significant in relation to international flights, where the number of passengers fell by 86.3 per cent to 1.6 million, but at the same time, despite many Spaniards flying home for Christmas, there was a fall of 66.2 per cent in the figure for those on domestic services.

This brings to an end a year in which the number of passengers using Spanish airports has dropped by a staggering 72.4 per cent to 76.06 million, with all major airports affected although those in the Canaries fared marginally better due to a relaxation of travel restrictions during the early part of the autumn. Given that for the first two months of the year airlines were able to operate at normal levels, it is clear that since March the decimation of air travel and international tourism has been close to absolute, and Spanish airports have LOST 200 MILLION PASSENGERS THIS YEAR.

The Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera is far from being among the busiest in Spain, but it provides as graphic an illustration of the effect of Covid-19 as any, with the month of December seeing a total of just 2,313 passengers pass through the terminal building and only 80 flights (including both landings and take-offs), according to Aena. December is never one of the busiest months of the year at the Costa Cálida airport, but nonetheless in the last month of 2019 there were almost 37,000 passengers taking off and landing at Corvera: in other words, it could be said that last month almost 94 per cent of passengers were “lost” to the pandemic.

At the same time, it would be no exaggeration to say that the year as a whole was disastrous for the airport, which opened exactly 2 years ago (15th January 2019). The cumulative total of passengers in 2020 reached only 217,912, only a fifth of the 2019 total of just over 1.1 million.

Neither are the figures much better at Alicante-Elche airport, which was used in December by 126,143 passengers, 85.6 per cent fewer than in the same month in 2019. The end-of-year total reached only 3.74 million, just a quarter of the 14 million recorded in 2019.

Looking ahead to 2021, it is already clear that this bleak situation will continue at least until the end of the winter season in late March: Jet2 have confirmed that they will not be operating UK-Spain flights at least until April, Ryanair has this week cancelled dozens of flights to Spain, Spain has banned the entry of non-Spanish residents travelling from the UK until 2nd February, the UK has its own travel ban in place until mid-February and the soaring Covid incidence rates in Spain and the rest of Europe since the beginning of the year mean that the opportunities for travel will remain extremely limited: most people are confined to their homes or at least to the locality where they live, and the idea of being able to hop on a plane and travel abroad is little more than a dream!

Very few flights are available, and traffic at Corvera is limited to an average of little more than one arrival and one departure per day. This, of course, leads to a severe decrease in related activities: the public bus services are no longer in operation, taxi drivers are not called for, and eateries and other businesses in the terminal building are either surplus to requirements or banned from opening under current pandemic restrictions.

In other words, although the airport is not closed, it is open only in a very limited sense of the word!

However, in the longer term there is room for a little optimism. Throughout the world the hope is that as mass immunization programs progress international air travel will become feasible again at some point this year, and there is already speculation that a “vaccination passport” could be created in order to eliminate the need for PCR testing prior to boarding.

When that may happen, though, and how quickly the tourism and air travel sectors will recover, is impossible to predict. In addition, the departure of the UK from the EU a fortnight ago could further complicate travel from Britain to Spain, potentially weakening the largest market for Spain’s international tourism sector.

It seems certain that many people will be extremely keen to travel once it becomes safe to do so, but in the meantime there is no course of action available to airlines, airports and frustrated would-be travellers other than to wait and stay indoors, hoping that the virus spread can be reduced as quickly as possible.