El Prat faces the summer air season, which begins on March 26, further behind in terms of recovery of seats than the rest of the large Spanish airports. The airlines have programmed 221.8 million seats for this campaign in the Aena network, 4.4% more than in 2019, a record year for tourism that companies in the sector hope to surpass in 2023. In the case of Barcelona, The companies have put 37.2 million seats up for sale, 7% less than in the pre-pandemic summer. El Prat is the second airport by volume only behind Barajas, where 44.5 million seats have been programmed, but it is further away from the covid figures than the other large airports. Barajas, for example, is only one point away from the 2019 summer programming.
The main airports basically dependent on sun and beach tourism exceed the record campaign of four years ago. Palma de Mallorca has 30.3 million scheduled places, 8% more; Malaga, 17.9 million (14% more), Alicante, 12.3 million (4%), Ibiza, 9.3 million (11%) and Gran Canaria, 8.8 million (6%).
A host of factors weigh on the lower recovery of El Prat compared to Barajas or the rest of the large airports, say Aena sources. Among them, the slow return of flights from China stands out –which feed the entire Pacific region– and which have not yet returned to Barcelona, since the country has begun the reopening by State capitals and, therefore, has begun to fly to Spain through Madrid. Russia and Ukraine also had a greater weight in El Prat than in other airports, markets that have been closed since the start of the war. Brexit (airlines have scheduled 4% fewer seats than in 2019 between Spain and the United Kingdom, the country that was the main source of tourists) and the lower presence of cruise passengers have just explained this distance compared to 2019, according to Aena.
Alicia Casart, director of the Cabinet of Infrastructure Studies of the Chamber of Barcelona, also points to these reasons to explain the figures for El Prat. She considers, however, that the trend at the airport "is positive", as shown by the passenger data accumulated up to February. Last month more than 3.1 million passengers passed through Barcelona, only four points from the activity of February four years ago. “We are getting very close to the magnitudes of 2019”, even in the schedule for this summer, which, after all, is only seven points away, no matter how much the rest advance at a faster speed. Four years ago, moreover, the airport operated at the limit of its capacity and was very congested, with problems of flight delays, recalls Casart.
