ENAIRE forecasts more than 50,000 flights at Easter

ENAIRE is preparing to manage 5,000 more flights than last year between 7 and 17 April

ENAIRE, the air-navigation manager in Spain, expects to manage a total of 55,035 flights in the Spanish airspace these Easter holidays from 7 to 17 April. ### Imagen embebida: IMG_NdP_E_Marzo_2017_mapa ###

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

On the Easter days with the most aircraft movement as a result of people flying off on holiday, ENAIRE will shore up the number of ATCOs at its control centres and main control towers.

With this reinforcement, ENAIRE establishes the operational configurations needed to properly cover air traffic demand over the Easter holidays.

March figures

ENAIRE managed 140,175 flights in March, 4.4% more than the same month last year. Easter fell in March this year.

It was the 42nd month in a row of uninterrupted air traffic growth.

The segments that grew most were international and overflights. There were 79,314 international flights, a rise of 4.6%. There were 30,226 overflights (that neither start nor end at a Spanish airport) (+6.3%).

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

First-quarter figures

The cumulative figure for flights handled by ENAIRE from January to March was 385,622, a growth of 5.2% and much better than the European average of 2.7%. Of these, 216,446 were international flights, which at 6.9% was the segment that posted the highest growth, comprising 56% of total traffic in Spain.

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).