As restrictions fall, the El Altet air terminal will operate about a hundred flights this week, both arrivals and departures with different British airports, which represents an increase of close to 60% compared to the previous week, according to figures provided by Aena .
Following removal of the need on Monday, for UK passengers to undergo mandatory PCR tests in order to enter Spain the Costa Blanca’s relationship with it’s main source market, the United Kingdom, is growing, despite the fact that the lifting of restrictions has not been reciprocal.
Spain remains in ‘amber’ on the now famous British traffic light system, so unless the situation changes those same tourists will be forced to undergo a test and quarantine on their return to their country of origin, which continues to discourage travel.
On Monday, El Altet operated four flights (two arrival and two departure) with airports in the United Kingdom, with a further 97 scheduled up to next Sunday.
Last week, the Alicante terminal operated 62 flights, which means that the increase this week will be almost 60%. Of course, scheduling a flight does not mean that it is full, but El Altet considers the reaction of the airlines that link the British Isles with the Costa Blanca to be a very positive indicator.
The airline with the greatest number of flights between Alicante and the United Kingdom is, as usual, the Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair, but companies such as British Airways, TUI, EasyJet, Wizz Air and the Spanish airline Vueling also fly to and from British airports.
The other large low-cost airline, Jet2, plans to start flying to Alicante in a month. Most connections are with London, but there are also several flights to Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol and Glasgow. All this is despite the fact that the British Government continues to recommend that its nationals don’t travel to Spain, curiously with a cumulative incidence lower than that of the United Kingdom, the doors to which have just been closed by Germany.
Puig asks for a ‘regional’ traffic light
Also on Monday, the President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, asked the British Ambassador to Spain, Hugh Elliott, that the United Kingdom “territorialise” the restrictions to travel to Spain due to the “asymmetries” that exist in the accumulated incidence between autonomies.
Puig said that the Valencian needs to reactivate mobility “sooner rather than later”, so he hopes that in the forthcoming revisions of its incidence “traffic light”, the United Kingdom can meet this request.
A total of 37 airlines have already requested the Alicante-Elche airport to reserve landing and departure slots from 131 airports across 27 countries. This information was released at the Fitur international tourism fair last week by the airport director, Laura Navarro , during the presentation of the strategic plan for the Costa Blanca, figures that will enable El Altet to recover part of the old normality during this summer.
