Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport is on the verge of reaching a historic new milestone in air traffic this year. In 2019, Spain’s fourth busiest airport celebrated its 100th anniversary by reaching a record total of 19,856,299 passengers, 4.4% more than the previous year. If that growth continues in 2020, the airport is expected to break the 20 million barrier towards the end of the year.
In the meantime, 2019 was marked by three other milestones: the airport totalled 400 million travellers since its launch in September 1919; topped two million monthly passengers for the first September in its history; and registered 144,920 landing and talk-off operations, 2.5% more than in 2018.
The vast majority of passengers in 2019 (19,798,215) travelled on commercial flights, including 16,851,281 connecting with a foreign origin or destination (an increase of 4% over the previous year). This dynamism in the foreign segment resulted in 2.1% growth in international operations, amounting to 111,776 in total.
The remaining 2,946,934 passengers moved within Spain’s borders, a 7.5% rise compared with 2018. A similar progression was recorded for the traffic volume with other Spanish airports, which rose to 28,795 operations (6.8% more than in 2018).
For destinations outside Spain, the United Kingdom maintained its leadership in 2019, with 5,856,480 passengers (up 2.2%), followed by Germany (1,585,012), France (1,207,230), Holland (1,124,480) and Ireland (892,290).
Comprehensive flight information for Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport is available here.
Dutch Tourists Love Málaga
An unrelated survey by flights and hotels portal Jetcost highlighted Málaga’s popularity with European tourists. The southern Spanish resort area was number one among the Dutch and the second most popular destination for Britons (behind Alicante). It also held down third place for Germans, French and Russian tourists. Visitors from the other country surveyed, Portugal, ranked Málaga 10th. Barcelona led the lists for French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian tourists, and Palma de Mallorca for the Germans.
New Record for Spanish Air Traffic in 2019
The number of passengers at Spanish airports in the Aena network rose to a record 275,237,810 in 2019, 4.4% more than the previous year. This total included 188.8 million travellers on international routes (3.5% up on 2018) and 85.5 million on national flights (a rise of 6.4%).
The busiest was Adolfo Suarez Madrid-Barajas Airport (61.7 million passengers), followed by Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat (52.6 million), Palma de Mallorca (29.7 million), Málaga-Costa del Sol (19.8 million) and Alicante-Elche (just over 15 million).
The number of operations at Aena airports in 2019 totalled 2,360,957, which was 2.6% more than in 2018. Leading the way was Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas (426,376), ahead of Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat (344,558), Palma de Mallorca (217,218), Málaga-Costa del Sol (144,920), Gran Canaria (126,452) and Alicante-Elche (101,408).