The ENAIRE Control Centre in Canaries managed 28,398 flights in March, up 4.8%

The cumulative figures for the 2017 first quarter were 82,000 flights managed, some 5.9% more

The ENAIRE Control Centre in Canaries managed 28,398 flights in March, up 4.8% on the same month in 2016. Easter fell in March this year.

ENAIRE, the air navigation manager in Spain, recorded a particular rise in activity among international flights, which in March grew to 16,581, or 8.5% more.

There were 9,331 domestic flights and 2,486 overflights (those that cross the Canary Island airspace and that neither start nor end at a Spanish airport).

Cumulative figures

In the first quarter of the year, the ENAIRE Control Centre in Canaries managed 82,252 flights, 5.9% more, of which 48,812 were international (10.6%), 26,374 were domestic and 7,066 were overflights.

The Canaries Control Centre manages air traffic services in a geographic area covering 1.5 Mn sq km, mostly over ocean and including the Canary Islands and part of the Western Sahara. It is the gateway to Latin America via the Atlantic.

Total flights managed by ENAIRE

ENAIRE managed 140,715 flights across Spain in March, a rise of 4.4% over the same month last year. It was the 42nd month in a row of uninterrupted air traffic growth.

Growth was strongest amongst international flights, which climbed to 79,314, or 4.6% more than last March. There were 31,175 domestic flights, a rise of 2.2%.

There were 30,226 overflights (those that neither start nor end at a Spanish airport) (6.3%).

Traffic was up across nearly all ENAIRE control centres: Seville (7.9%, 29,121 flights), Madrid (5.7%, 83,843 flights), Canaries (4.8%, 28,398 flights), Barcelona (3.1%, 58,453 flights) and Palma (-2.8 %, 13,242 flights).

The cumulative figures for January to March show that ENAIRE managed 385,622 flights across Spain, 5.2% more. Of these, international flights (216,446) grew the most, at 6.9%, and accounted for 56% of total traffic in Spain.

Of note was the fact that in the first quarter of the year, Spain’s 5.2% growth far exceeded the European average (2.7%).