Budget travel booms in Alicante

MORE than half of the passengers arriving at Alicante El Altet airport do so on low-cost carriers.

A total of 369,983 passengers used budget airlines in May, 78 per cent of all arrivals; an increase of 17 per cent over the same period last year.

Valencia’s Manises airport received 105,668 passenger on budget airlines. The Valencia Region has Spain’s fourth highest passenger volume by these companies, with a share of 13.6 per cent, behind the Balearic islands (26 per cent), Catalonia (24.7 per cent) and Andalucia (14.9 per cent).

During the first five months of the year, the Valencia Region received a total of 1.59 million international passengers on low-cost airlines, an increase of 7 per cent over the same period last year. Alicante airport accounted for 1.2 million of these passengers, a growth of 11 per cent on the same time last year.

These results place Valencia in fifth place in Spain after Catalonia, with 3 million passengers, Baleares, with 1.9 million, Canary Islands, with 1.8 and Andalusia with 1.7 million passengers.