Spanish airports enjoy bumper March as passenger numbers up 14%

With Easter falling a few weeks earlier than normal this year, some tourism experts had worried about the impact that could have had on travel spending. After all, a sunny, dry Easter is far more enjoyable than a wet and windy one. And an Easter in mid-April is far more likely to deliver those conditions than one at the end of March…

But, such is the way these things are decided (actually, how IS Easter’s date decided? Does anybody know?) that this year, Easter fell on the last weekend in March. What that meant, however, was a bumper month for Spain’s airports as millions of tourists flocked south for some earlier-than-normal winter sun.

Combined with near decade-low fuel prices helping to limit air fare increases, the early Easter meant that the number of passengers recorded at Spanish airports for March rose a massive 14% compared to the same month last year.

Official data from Spain’s aviation industry showed that 16.47 million people passed through the country’s airports last month, with all of Spain’s 18 busiest airports recording heavier traffic than last year.

Now, environmentalists might not like that data, but for almost everybody else it represented yet more positive news for the country’s economy. The most significant increase recorded was at Palma de Majorca, which saw 26.1% more passengers in March this year than March 2015.

Alicante also performed well (25.1% increase), as did the Costa del Sol’s Málaga airport, which recorded a sharp increase in passenger numbers of 21.8%.

When extrapolated out for the first quarter of the year, Spanish airports welcomed 42.74 million passengers in the first three months of 2016 – a 14.4% increase on the first quarter of 2015. Over this first quarter, Málaga airport’s traffic volume has been 18.2% higher, which suggests a spectacular year ahead for the Costa del Sol’s holiday resorts if this trend continues…