That IAG, the group that owns the airlines Iberia, Vueling, Briths Airways and Aer Lingus, is an economic power is well-known news, but this Monday its CEO, Luis Gallego, wanted to put numbers on this role.
According to his calculations, the direct, indirect and induced activity of the group in Spain is 21,500 million euros, which translates into a contribution of 1.7% of GDP; an activity that, in turn, means the creation of 371,000 jobs, the equivalent of 2% of all employment in Spain. These are the data prepared by PwC in a report commissioned by IAG and published this Monday.
These data respond to the accounting of the direct activity of the group, the indirect activity with suppliers as well as the induced activity, which takes into account, among other things, the activity and spending of international tourists that the airlines of the group transport to Spain. , as well as the part of additional spending that Spanish tourists contribute to GDP with the additional stipends they make during their vacation trips.
Looking exclusively at corporate activity, IAG's corporate impact derived from its activity in Spain represented a contribution to GDP of 6,500 million euros. This implies that, for every euro of IAG operating profit (ebitda), 4.72 euros were generated in the Spanish economy.
The direct impact was the most pronounced (46%), followed by indirect (28%) and induced (27%) impacts.
In the case of IAG's corporate impact on employment, the group's activity contributed to the generation of 71,037 full-time equivalent jobs in the Spanish economy. This implies that for every euro of IAG ebitda, another 51 jobs are maintained.
The pullback effect, which looks at the spending of passengers using IAG flights and the broader economic impact of this spending on the entire Spanish economy, was €15 billion and supported 300,000 jobs.
The study shows that for each passenger who flies with IAG, 636 euros in gross added value are generated. While for every 1,000 passengers who fly to Spain with IAG, 14.7 jobs are generated.
This demonstration of economic force could be read as a notice to sailors from a company that for weeks has been warning of the need for the Next Generation Funds of the European Union to focus on promoting the production of biosustainable fuels for aviation, known in the industry as SAF.
Its use is mandatory for Brussels in order to meet the decarbonisation objectives for 2030 and 2050, but the low production of this type of fuel threatens to trigger the bill of the group whose finances are already sufficiently touched after the high debt that it has had to assume after the pandemic.
The current lack of support from Spain has not led the group to consider transferring its listing outside the country, according to Luis Gallego's emphatic response to the question raised by the journalists who attended the presentation of the study.
Although most of the questions that the top manager of the IAG has received have been focused on how the file of the merger between Iberia and Air Europa evolves, which is currently under study by the competition authorities of the European Union.
In this sense, Luis Gallego has assured that Iberia has assumed that they will have to accept conditions ("remedies", according to Competition jargon) and get rid of some of the current connections to receive authorization from Brussels for the merger.
In 2021, Iberia renounced said merger considering that Brussels imposed too demanding conditions. As then, Luis Gallego has once again insisted on the "importance of the merger between Iberia and Air Europa to boost the Madrid hub and the Spanish economy in general, as seen in the impact that the company contributes to GDP".
Beyond the activity in Spain, Gallego has assured that IAG could be interested in attending the future privatization of TAP, the Portuguese flag carrier, "depending on its economic conditions".
