Yzabelle Bostyn
THIS summer Malaga airport has been pushed to its limit with flights arriving or leaving every three minutes from the Costa del Sol.
Malaga airport is preparing for yet another record month.
It comes after a historic six months which saw 11.5 million travellers pass through the airport, some 1.5 million more (14.1%) than in the same period of 2023.
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Photo: Cordon Press
In just the first week of August, from this Wednesday to Sunday, some 2,848 flights are expected, some 200 more than the same week last year.
Of these flights, 80% will be international, with 487 international and just 81 national flights this Saturday alone.
There’s no doubt this volume will be a challenge for the airport, with up to 10 flights per minute at peak time and an average of one every three minutes.
Tomorrow, Thursday August 1, the airport is expected to start this record breaking month, with eight take offs and two landings at 09:30 am.
Malaga Airport is the landing point for many international tourists visiting Andalucia.
It is Aena’s fourth biggest airport in terms of volume of passengers, behind Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca.
The biggest market is still Brits, with 2,602,205 passengers since the start of this year, followed by Germans (881,119) and Dutch (723,313).
In 2023, Malaga airport registered a historic record, with 22 million passengers, 12.5% more than the previous 2019 record.
Brits are also still the biggest hotel market, with 12,850 guests and 31,331 overnight stays in June.
But travellers from the United States are also increasing.
Data from the Spanish Statistics Institute (INE), showed US tourists were the second biggest market in Malaga’s hotels this June.
Over 8,000 people made over 17,000 overnight stays in the city in the first month of summer.
Currently, only United Airlines operates non-stop flights between the US and Malaga, with three taking off per week.
As a result, local authorities are now pushing for more frequent trains to the airport.
“The airport has 600 flights a day, but you can’t catch a train there after 11:30 pm,” the mayor of Torremolinos, Margarita del Cid recently said.
The issue was a key talking point at a meeting Malaga leaders had with the central Spanish government about mobility in the area.
According to sources present at the meeting, the idea of increasing the number of trains, at least at the weekend, and making them later was well-received.
