Vueling cuts all winter flights from Cardiff Airport to Málaga and Alicante, just months after going on sale

Anyone hoping to fly direct from south Wales to the Costa del Sol this winter now has no back-up option, and passengers already booked to Alicante will be flying with an airline that never actually sold them their initial ticket.

Vueling drops Alicante for the whole winter 

Cardiff Airport has confirmed that Vueling is withdrawing its winter service to Alicante, only months after tickets for the route went back on sale this spring. 

A Cardiff Airport spokesperson said: “We are disappointed that Vueling has taken the decision to withdraw its Cardiff to Alicante service for the winter season.” The airport added that “Alicante remains a popular destination from Cardiff, with TUI and Ryanair continuing to offer direct flights this winter.”

Passengers heading to the Costa Blanca are not left with nothing this winter though, with both of those airlines still flying Cardiff to Alicante directly.

Málaga’s Christmas link disappears without explanation

Passengers checking bookings this month found that the airline’s short Christmas link to Málaga, which had run for the past two winters, had vanished from sale too. No equivalent statement has been issued about Málaga so far. The route was always the smaller operation of the two, limited to a short window around Christmas and New Year rather than the full winter, which may explain why its disappearance has drawn less attention than the Alicante withdrawal.

Anyone flying to the Costa del Sol does not have the same fallback as Alicante passengers, with no direct alternative currently on sale from Cardiff to Málaga.

A route that had just been growing

Vueling has flown from Cardiff for more than 12 years, and the Málaga service in particular had been expanding rather than shrinking until now. The airline added extra weekly Málaga flights from June 2025, taking the route from four departures a week to five during that autumn’s half-term period, after Cardiff Airport said customers had been “asking for more choice” on the route.

Cardiff Airport published its winter 2026/27 schedule this spring, with Málaga listed for a five-week Christmas and New Year window. Within months, both that slot and the Alicante service had disappeared from Vueling’s Cardiff timetable.

A taxpayer-backed airport that says it is thriving

The timing is awkward for an airport that spent the spring celebrating its finances. The Welsh Government, which has owned Cardiff Airport since 2013, won a legal fight in the Competition Appeal Tribunal on Tuesday April 7, 2026, confirming it can continue paying the airport more than 205 million pounds (€239 million) over 10 years, after Bristol Airport challenged the subsidy as unfair. 

Cardiff Airport says the investment is working. It reported more than a million passengers in the 12 months to June 2026, a rise of 24 per cent that it says made it the UK’s second fastest-growing airport, according to Civil Aviation Authority figures. Critics of the subsidy have pointed out that Cardiff still carries a fraction of the traffic handled by Bristol, the rival airport many Welsh passengers weigh up against it for flights to Spain.

No promise of a return

Neither Vueling nor Cardiff Airport has said whether the Alicante or Málaga routes will be back for summer 2027. For now, Cardiff’s map of direct Spain flights this winter looks a lot more bleak than it did in the spring, with one popular route gone entirely and the other continuing only because rival airlines stepped in.