The company has scheduled eleven connections for the 2012 summer season which begins in March, with a total capacity of 871,992 seats. This figure represents an increase of 85,000 more seats than the same period last year, as stated by the airline Vueling.

Thus, travellers can fly with this company from the Costa del Sol to Toulouse (France), Rome (Italy), Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Paris (France), Barcelona, Bilbao, Tenerife, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Santiago. In addition, through connecting flights via Barcelona, from Malaga airport you can travel to the Norwegian fjords, Sweden and the Greek islands Mykonos, Santorini or Crete.

Cancelled flights at Madrid-Barajas airport

A total of nine flights departing from or arriving at Andalusian airports will be canceled on Wednesday January 11, due to the strike by the pilots of the company Iberia.

Thus, canceled flights, in particular, will be the flights Madrid-Seville at 3:45 pm, Seville-Madrid at 5:35 pm, Jerez-Madrid at 1:40 pm, Madrid-Jerez at 11:50 am, Jerez-Madrid at 7.00 am, Madrid-Jerez at 7.50 am, Malaga-Madrid at 5:45 pm, Granada-Madrid at 5:45 pm and the flight Madrid-Granada at 4:00 pm.

Affected international connections are the long-haul flights connecting Madrid-Barajas to Miami, Bogota, Lima, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Mexico. Also affected are flights to Lisbon, London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Zurich, Geneva, Frankfurt, Milan, Venice, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Zurich, Rome and Casablanca.

This strike today adds to the one last Monday, January 9 and the two-day strike on December 18 and 29, 2011.

Iberia has eased rates to facilitate the exchange or refund to customers affected by these cancellations and is looking for alternative flights with Iberia or with other companies with which it has agreements.

Customers who have purchased their tickets through ‘www.iberia.com’ will receive a message about the incident that might have occurred in their flight and a travel alternative, where feasible, to be agreed in the website.

They may also call the phone number Iberia has established to address this issue, the 902 100 988 in Spain, to be offered alternatives. If you do not want to fly, the reimbursement will be processed through the same website.

Meanwhile those who have booked through a travel agent should contact with this in order to manage changes or refunds of their tickets and to expedite the paperwork.

Iberia will keep their customers informed at all times through its website, Serviberia and other call centers of Iberia worldwide, Iberia profiles on Facebook and Twitter, all points of customer service in more than 100 airports where operates Iberia, and travel agencies.

From June 26 to July 31, flights to Berlin and Hamburg take off from Malaga airport six times a week. Flights to Cologne will increase between July 13 and August 28 to total of four weekly conditions. It will also be possible to fly during this time up to eight times a week to the city of Düsseldorf. Every Thursday, there will be an additional flight from Malaga to Munich, between August 9 and September 6, increasing the number of weekly flights to this city to a total of four.

Helitt airplane

The Andalusian airline Helitt, which commenced its scheduled flights on November 21, has announced new routes and frequencies to debut in 2012, among which is the new route Madrid-Malaga.

The new route will operate on Fridays, starting January 1. This new route will be joined by new frequencies between Madrid-Melilla and Malaga-Melilla.

The new company had an average occupancy of 33% in its first four weeks, reaching 2,000 passengers. The punctuality rate is 98% and there were no notable incidents in the first month of existence.

With routes to Malaga, Barcelona and Madrid, Helitt has linked the city of Melilla with three of the most important cities in Spain.

Low Cost Airlines in Malaga

If they were already working well through good times, the low cost airlines seem to be working even better in times of crisis. There’s definitely no lack of clients.

The result is that the low cost airlines transported 34.19 million passengers over the first eleven months of the year, a 12.8% increase compared to the same period in 2010, as opposed to the traditional companies that transferred 25.5 million travellers, 7.5% more.

According to statistics from the Industry, Tourism and Trade Ministry, produced by the Institute of Tourism Studies, the low cost companies took up more than half of the air traffic until October, 57.2%, as opposed to the traditional companies that transported 42.8% of the travellers.

As for markets, UK and Germany lead the entrances in low cost companies, with 36.4% and 20.1% of the passengers that chose this way, respectively, with increases of 9.3% for the British market (12.4 million travellers) and increases of 5.9% for the German market (6.8 million passengers).

Italy, the third issuer, increased the arrivals by 16.1% with 3.6 million travellers, the equivalent of 10.6% of the total entrances this way. It was then followed by France, with 5.4% of the total and 1.8 million travellers, 27,8% more than a year ago.

Palma de Mallorca, the first airport
The rest of the countries presented generalised increases, all of two digits -except Ireland (+6.5%)-, in the number of low cost passengers emitted towards Spain. Amongst the countries worth mentioning are: Holland (+25.8%), Romania (26.6%), Portugal (+24.2%) and Norway (+19.8%).

So far this year, the Spanish airports that were most used by the low cost airlines were: Palma de Mallorca, with 6 million passengers, meaning an increase of 11.8%; Barcelona-El Prat, with 4.9 million passengers, 36.7% more; Malaga-Costa del Sol, with 3.8 million passengers, 7.1% more; Madrid-Barajas, with 3.44 million, 12.9% more; and Alicante, with 3.4 million, 7.9% more.

In order of autonomous regions, the Balearic Islands are top of the list, with 22.5% of the entrances and 7.7 million passengers, with an increase of 11.7%. Followed then by Catalonia with 19.7%, up to 6.7 million travellers (+11.9%); Canary Islands, with 5.6 million travellers (+24.2%) and Andalusia, with 4.7 million passengers (+8.7%).