Six UK airports lose half their flights to Mallorca this winter

Families planning to fly home to the UK from Mallorca this Christmas might struggle to find a seat, with some routes down by more than half. Palma’s runway is meanwhile welcoming glossy new long-haul links to New York and Abu Dhabi, while its bread-and-butter British connections quietly disappear for the winter.

Southend’s Palma flights are down by 83 per cent

Anyone flying between London Southend and Mallorca this winter faces the steepest drop of all. The route’s schedule has been slashed by as much as 83 per cent compared with last winter, according to figures reported by the Majorca Daily Bulletin and Última Hora, the sharpest cut among a group of UK airports all losing ground at once.

East Midlands isn’t far behind, with flights down 75 per cent, while Newcastle’s schedule has shrunk by 64 per cent. Passengers who could once choose from several flights a week may now find just a handful across the whole season, if the route has survived at all. 

Bristol, Birmingham and Edinburgh also lose more than half their routes 

Edinburgh’s Palma flights are down 61 per cent, and Bristol, Birmingham and Liverpool have each lost around 54 to 55 per cent of theirs. That’s six regional UK airports where getting to or from Mallorca has just become twice as hard.

Across the whole airport, Son Sant Joan (Palma’s official name) is running 9.1 per cent fewer flights this winter than last year, though passenger numbers are down a smaller 1.3 per cent. So the cuts look concentrated on the routes airlines see as the least profitable once the summer holiday rush ends.

Ryanair loses its top spot as Palma’s busiest airline

Ryanair’s Palma operations are down 18 per cent this winter, enough to knock it off the number one spot for the first time in years. easyJet has also pulled back by 21 per cent.

The airline filling that gap is Vueling, up 17.4 per cent and now Palma’s busiest carrier, with Iberia, up 39 per cent, and smaller operators including Volotea growing fast too. It’s a little rich coming from Vueling, given the airline axed its own winter Cardiff to Alicante and Málaga routes only last year. However, that growth is happening mostly on Spanish and wider European routes rather than the regional UK links now being cut.

New long-haul routes land as regional UK links get cut

The timing can be especially irritating to those looking for their regular short connections back to the UK, as the airport has spent 2026 adding headline-grabbing long-haul connections, including Air Canada’s new Montreal service, Etihad’s first-ever direct Gulf link and a seasonal United route to Newark, while Glasgow gained a brand new BA CityFlyer service too. It’s part of a wider pattern across the Balearics this year, with Ibiza and Valencia also landing their own first-ever nonstop US links.

So while the glamorous new routes win the headlines, it’s the everyday regional flights, the ones that get British residents and second-home owners home for Christmas or a half-term visit, that are quietly disappearing from the schedule. It’s not the first time this year either: easyJet pulled out of Leeds Bradford entirely in August, taking its own Mallorca and Málaga routes with it.

What to do if your usual flight home has thinned out

Anyone planning to fly between Mallorca and one of the six affected airports this winter should check their airline’s current schedule rather than assume last year’s timetable still applies, especially around Christmas and New Year when demand for seats is at its highest.

With fewer flights chasing the same demand, prices on the routes that remain are likely to climb as the season goes on. Booking early, or looking at a connecting flight through Madrid or Barcelona, may be the safest way to guarantee a seat home.