Another bumper summer ahead for Málaga airport as 15.5 million tourists expected

Málaga airport, which serves the Costa del Sol, is poised for another record-breaking year in 2017, according to the airport’s director, Salvador Merino.

Having recorded 16.6 million passengers in 2016, the director is confident that the summer months alone will see 15.5 million flight passengers using the airport – which would put it on course to handle more than 18 million by October, Merino believes…

Although cautiously admitting that “many factors could influence the demand”, the airport director revealed that as many as 90,000 flights are scheduled this summer between May and October, which will likely work out at around 500 flights a day.

By analysing early year trends, many tour operators are equally hopeful of a bumper summer for Spain, with a number of additional flight routes and flight times being added for Málaga airport – and not just from the UK and Ireland, but also Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Belgium.

By the summer, Málaga will serve a record 126 destinations, with 62 of those between locations in the UK (a 9% increase on 2016), which serves to highlight that Brits are still the predominant holidaymakers and second-home owners in the Costa del Sol currently.

However, the increase in connection routes between Málaga and Germany and Málaga and Italy has risen by 20% in the past year, a statistic that shows the broad and growing appeal of Southern Spain to people from all over Europe.

Data published in February revealed that Málaga airport registered 867,382 passengers in January this year – an 18.4% increase on the same period in 2016.