Airlines love Alicante
BRITISH airlines’ love affair with Alicante-Elche airport remains undimmed, with Jet2 celebrating the 20th anniversary of its first flight there, and EasyJet announcing it will set up a new base there.
EasyJet will open a seasonal base at the airport from spring 2024, where it will increase the number of seats available by 16% on this summer with three new A320 aircraft.
The company said this will be their fourth base in Spain, and will enable the number of seats next summer to reach 1.62 million, compared to 1.4M this summer, with 11 routes to European destinations.
According to their director general for southern Europe, Javier Gándara, it will create about 100 jobs, noting that they are continuing to grow in Alicante, having already increased the capacity of their routes to and from the airport by 6% between 2015 and 2019.
EasyJet started operating in Alicante in 1999, with its first route to London Stansted, since when it has transported 27.5 million passengers to and from the Costa Blanca airport.
Meanwhile, Jet2 launched its first flight to Alicante in 2003 from Leeds, and has carried over 10 million passengers to and from the airport since then.
This summer the company is offering routes between Alicante and Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, East Midlands, Glasgow, Leeds,
Manchester, Newcastle and Stansted.
From March 2024, they will also offer flights from Liverpool, making a total of 420,000 seats coming to Alicante reaching a peak of 70 flights per week.
Jet2holidays provides package holidays in association with the airline and works with almost 100 hotels in the Costa Blanca.
The airport itself celebrated its best ever April with 1,435,274 passengers, up 7% on the same period of 2019 and 19.5% on the same month of last year, according to state airport company AENA.
Over half a million of these passengers were from the UK.