Corvera airport will open the summer season on the last weekend of March with flights to around twenty cities in six countries. The Porto line, which will operate between July and September, is the main addition to the new season, in which, for the first time, there will also be connections with seven Spanish cities.
In addition to the connections with Gran Canaria and the new routes to Madrid and Barcelona inaugurated at the beginning of December, Volotea airlines will also add connections with Bilbao, Oviedo, Santander and Menorca.
The tour operator Soltour will launch the new Porto route with a weekly charter flight, which will depart from the airport on Thursdays.
The United Kingdom, which has nine air routes from Corvera, continues to be the main destination country for the international airport, which turned five years old on January 15.
Ryanair will fly to Manchester, East Midlands, London-Luton, London-Stansted, Birmingham and Glasgow. It will also maintain the route with Dublin, the capital of Ireland.
Easyjet will connect the Region with London-Gatwick, London-Luton and Bristol. The airport will also regain flights to Bruges and Antwerp by TUI Fly next summer.
In Morocco, the connection with Casablanca, which disappeared last year, will be added to the schedules and Oujda, a city located in the northeast of the country, near the border with Algeria, will continue.
The Ministry of Tourism had also announced a new route to Marrakech starting in April, although it is yet to appear in the schedule for next season.
Within Spain, for the first time, the Region will have connections with seven Spanish cities. Adding to the flights with Gran Canaria, operated by Binter throughout the year, and those to Madrid and Barcelona, which Volotea launched in December after being awarded the 2.4 million contract from the Community to promote regional tourism, there are new connections with Menorca, Bilbao, Oviedo and Santander.
Thus, the number of national destinations is now close to those of the United Kingdom for the first time. However, most of these domestic routes will have just two weekly connections, while the flight schedule to Manchester or London includes daily departures from Monday to Saturday.
In the winter season that will end at the end of next March, Corvera was left with only six international routes to Morocco, the United Kingdom and Ireland, in addition to the three national lines of Binter and Volotea.
THE SUPPRESSION OF DOMESTIC FLIGHTS PLANNED ON THE MADRID ROUTE
The suppression of domestic flights that last less than two and a half hours and have a rail alternative is planned on the Madrid route, which the regional government launched at the beginning of December in response to the demands of the Cartagena employers’ association.
The connection with Barcelona, which Volotea also established after being awarded the Community contract to promote regional tourism, will not be affected by this limitation established in the agreement that the PSOE and Sumar took last week to the Ecological Transition Commission of Congress.
The line from Murcia to Madrid could also circumvent the ban on domestic flights with a duration of less than two and a half hours if it is considered that there is no real rail alternative to air communication with the capital of Spain. The possibility of traveling by AVE from Murcia to Madrid may be considered a valid solution for travellers from the capital, but it is not clear if the consideration would be the same for railway communications in Cartagena.
The regional government already responded last year when the elimination of flights was included in the investiture agreement between the PSOE and Sumar that the railway cannot be considered a valid alternative in the Region.
