Ryanair, Iberia and easJet offer flights on their websites from May 15, currently the official date of the end of air restrictions
Aena said that it has devised its own plan to open up air traffic in Spain as commercial air restrictions begin to be lifted with the de-escalation divided into three phases.
In the first, domestic flights will be re-introduced, in the second, connections with Europe will be re-established and in the third and final phase, the airport will restore it’s long-haul operations.
There is still no specific date for the Alicante-Elche airport to start it’s recovery operation, but companies are beginning to move and it is curious that in recent days some airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet and Iberia are offering flights on their websites from May 10, the date on which the period of confinement in Spain is due to end.
Sources from the airport operator, Aena, say that they have proof of the fact but stress that from the Ministry of Transport, there has been no official communication in this regard.
Currently at the airport, Vueling continues to operate with three flights a week to Barcelona as well as cargo, ambulance flights and repatriation flights.
According to Aena’s plans, the first flights to be recovered in Alicante will be the connections with Santiago, Madrid, Bilbao, Seville, the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands. It will also be interesting to see if the airlines introduce the links with Vigo, A Coruña and Santander that were planned for the summer season.
Six additional regional airports have closed their ‘operate on demand’ facility, that is, they open only when an airline requests them to carry out an operation. They are Albacete, Badajoz, León, Salamanca, Valladolid and Zaragoza who now join others who closed last week at Almería, Granada and Jaén, A Coruña, Vigo, Asturias, Santander, Pamplona, Jérez, San Sebastián , Logroño, Son Bonet and the Ceuta heliport.
Currently there are almost twenty airports in Spain that are operational when an airline expressly requests them to carry out a landing or take-off operation from its facilities, a request that must be made at least three hours in advance.
This is one of the measures that Aena has taken to readjust the capacity of the airport network following the collapse of their activities.
On Sunday 224 flights operated in Spain, about 90% less than what is usual on normal dates, and which mostly correspond to connections with and between the islands.
