Airline companies have schedule almost 21 million seats on their aircraft, to and from the Costa del Sol, during the upcoming high season, which will begin on the last weekend of March and will last until the end of October. This high number confirms that airlines maintain a strong commitment to the destination. In comparison to last year, this represents a 10% increase. On a national level, airline companies will offer a total of 246.8 million seats on flights to and from Spain during the high season, which is 6.5% more than in the peak season of 2024.
Malaga Airport has started the year on an upward trend. Aena (Spain’s airport operator) has highlighted the number of passengers who transited through the Costa del Sol’s main airport in January – 1,369,837. This breaks last year’s January record by 2%. The infrastructure grew at a rate of 20% in January 2024, when a total of 10,423 flights operated on its runways, 0.9% more than in January 2023.
1,369,837
passengers have passed through Malaga Airport this January
With such records, Malaga Airport remains the fourth in Spain in terms of passenger volume and operations. It is worth remembering that last year, this infrastructure closed January with a historic figure of 1,344,443 passengers, which represented a 20% growth compared to January 2023. This marked a rate of growth that was double the national average and that allowed Malaga to overtake Gran Canaria and become the third airport in Spain in terms of passenger volume, according to Aena data. Usually the Costa del Sol airport is the fourth in the network, with Gran Canaria ahead in the winter months and Palma de Mallorca in the summer season.
International traffic
The key to achieving the new records was the pull of international traffic, given that 1,072,104 of the total number of passengers in January 2024 opted for connections with foreign countries. This figure represents an increase of 24%. Even so, domestic flight passengers also grew: 267,904 travelled by plane to or from a Spanish city, 6.7% more than in January 2023.
It was also in January that airlines noted the decline in domestic tourism, highlighting a slight decrease of 0.2%, compared to the 2.3% increase in flights outside Spain. With regard to international traffic, the markets with the greatest demand were the UK (243,083 passengers), followed by the Netherlands (95,395), Germany (92,280) and Italy (84,350).
So far this year, Malaga Airport has been increasing its inflow and outflow of passengers at a slower rate than the national average, which has recorded an 6.1% increase in passengers, up to 19,801,425 passengers, and a 5.2% increase in aircraft movements, with 174,488 flights managed by the control towers of the Aena network. Despite this, the Costa del Sol airport is one of the twenty airports with record passenger numbers and one of the eleven infrastructures that have marked the best records in operations in their history.