ENAIRE forecasts more than 50,000 flights at Easter

The Spanish air navigation service provider forecasts managing 5,000 more flights than last year between 7 and 17 April

ENAIRE forecasts managing a total of 55,000 flights in the Spanish airspace these Easter holidays from 7 to 17 April.

The figure represents 2.7% of the estimated 2017 traffic and 5,000 more flights than in the same period of 2016.

To cover this significant traffic volume, ENAIRE will bring in extra ATCOs at its control centres and main control towers.

March figures

Air traffic has grown uninterruptedly over the past 42 months.

ENAIRE managed 140,175 flights in March, 4.4% up on the same month last year, even though Easter fell in March in 2016.

The segments that grew the most were international flights (up 4.6%) and overflights (+6.3%). 79,000 international flights and 30,000 overflights were logged altogether.

The control centre that posted the highest growth was Seville, with 29,121 flights (+7.9%), followed by Madrid, with 83,843 (+5.7%), then Canaries, with 28,398 flights (+4.8%); Barcelona, with 58,453 (+3.1%) and Palma, with 13,242 flights (‑2.8%).

First Quarter Figures

The cumulative figure for flights managed by ENAIRE from January to March was 385,622, a 5.2% rise that was much better than the European average of 2.7%.

Of these, 216,446 flights were international ones (i.e., 56% of the total) and this was also the segment that grew the most (+6.9%).

Traffic rose across all the control centres in the first quarter: Seville (6.6%, 78,903 flights), Madrid (5.9%, 234,689 flights), Canaries (5.9%, 82,252 flights), Barcelona (4.5%, 154,797 flights) and Palma (2.8%, 32,314).