ARCHIVED - Ryanair set to resume UK flights into Corvera airport from Friday

Corvera airport has been virtually deserted in the last year due to the heavy dependence on UK passengers

The last year has been disastrous for Corvera airport, the April statistics published recently reporting a 98 per cent loss in passenger traffic during April 2021 (2,153 passengers), when compared to April 2019 (110,000 passengers) in the year before the pandemic struck.

International travel has been at a virtual standstill and the traditional heavy dependence on flights to and from the UK has left the airport amongst those reporting the largest losses of passenger traffic in all of Spain.

But hopefully, that’s all about to change, following the announcement of Ryanair that flights will resume this Friday (May 21) between the Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera and Manchester.

Flights to Birmingham will resume on June 1, and those to Bournemouth on June 4. It is hoped that Glasgow also resume flights by June 15, although a lot will depend on the final decision of the UK government regarding the “traffic light” classification of Spain.

As Spain is currently classified as an amber destination, travellers flying back to the UK from Spain will have to quarantine for 10 days, or five days if they take a negative PCR test on day five.

The UK government’s Joint Biosecurity Centre will review the list every three weeks, taking into account factors including each country’s infection rate and level of vaccinations, meaning that Spain could potentially be moved to the UK’s green list in the first revision (or not, according to speculation in the UK media).

The ‘Stay in the UK’ regulation was lifted on 17 May, meaning leisure travel from England is no longer illegal, although the situation is still a little complicated as the Spanish government is maintaining its ban on non-essential travel between the two countries until May 31 for third country nationals, so this means that British residents are still not permitted to enter the country for non-essential reasons until that date.

In the last few days (including Monday evening when discussing the Canary Islands) the Spanish Tourism Minister has several times indicated that British travellers will be able to travel to Spain from May 20, but as of today, nothing official has been published in the BOE changing the date of May 31, although of course, this may change within hours.

At the moment Corvera has two routes now running between the airport to Antwerp and Brussels-Charleroi, courtesy of TUI and a weekly flight to the Canary Islands with Binter.

This summer there are plans for internal connections to Oviedo, Palma de Mallorca, Barcelona, Santander, Bilbao and Menorca, in the expectation that demand for domestic tourism will be higher this summer as the Spanish domestic population is less likely to be keen to travel abroad given the Covid situation and probability that the vaccination roll-out will continue for several months to come, so there is the possibility that the airport could have connections with 19 airports in 17 cities and three countries this summer, giving the potential for 32 weekly connections.

At the moment, however, other airlines have yet to confirm if any other European operators will choose to operate from the airport this summer, although it is logical to hope that the decision of Ryanair to resume services may attract other airlines.

If not, then a wider range of connections will be available from nearby Alicante airport.

The vaccination campaign across Spain is helping to drive down the rate of new contagions in Spain and as of Monday evening 32 per cent of the national population had received at least one dose of a vaccine and more than seven million people had been fully immunized.

The accumulated incidence rate across all of Spain dropped to 151 cases per 100,000 of population on Monday, positioning Spain just shy of moving into the “medium risk” zone, and marking a gradual descent in covid incidence across the country.

The neighbouring Valencia region has the lowest incidence rate in the country and the Murcia region is also amongst those now reporting the lowest levels in the country.

So hopefully the sound of aircraft taking off and landing at Corvera from the UK will resume by this weekend and we can look forward to the numbers of British nationals spending their money in local businesses increasing in the near future.

And not a moment too soon!