Vueling and Ryanair consolidate their dominance at Barcelona airport. Both companies gain passenger share in El Prat compared to 2019, although the IAG airline is still far behind the Irish one.
The latest data published by Aena, this week, indicates that 41% of all passengers who passed through El Prat –both departures and arrivals– in the first nine months of the year chose Vueling to travel. In 2019 as a whole, 38% of the people who took off or landed in Barcelona did so, three points less.
In total, 12,890,744 passengers flew with the IAG airline from January to September. In this period, the airport has received almost 31 million passengers.
Ryanair follows with 17% of passengers carried at the airport this year (5,546,801 travellers). In this case, the Dublin-based company also increased its market share by three points compared to three years ago. Throughout the network of Aena airports, Ryanair continues to be the passenger leader.
Iberia (plus Level), EasyJet and Lufthansa complete the top 5 airlines with the most passengers in El Prat in 2022. Immediately after, WizzAir stands out. The Hungarian low cost airline takes advantage of the fall of Norwegian and the lower performance of the British branch of EasyJet to rise from ninth place by passengers in Barcelona in 2019 to the current sixth position. In the share of travelers, it has jumped from 1.9% in the pre-pandemic era to the current 2.7%.
As for the month of September, El Prat registered 4,208,612 passengers, which represents a recovery of 82.4% of passenger traffic in the same month of 2019. Of these, 3,031,686 were international passengers (79 have recovered .5% of the levels of September 2019) and 1,168,596, national passengers (in this case we are at 90.6% compared to the traffic of pre-pandemic levels).
September has been the third month with the highest number of travelers at Barcelona airport so far this year, behind July and August.
Reus airport, for its part, registered 148,341 passengers in September, which represents a recovery of 92.4% of travelers in the same month of 2019. So far this year, it has recovered 85.9% of passengers.
The Girona-Costa Brava airport has had the worst record. It closed September with 193,035 passengers (74.6% recovery), and in the first nine months of the year it has remained at 68.6% of pre-pandemic activity.
For this winter, the airlines plan to exceed the 2019 schedule.
