Malaga Airport News Blog about Malaga Airport (AGP)

Ryanair has announced on Tuesday a new connection between Malaga on the Costa del Sol and Leipzig in eastern Germany. This route, which opens on March 26, 2012, will operate two flights a week – Monday and Friday – as has been reported by the low-cost airline.

To celebrate this new connection, the company has launched an offer until Thursday midnight with one way tickets on all routes at 9.99 Euros, taxes included. The trip can be made between December and January and from Monday to Thursday.

Malaga wants to attract more British tourists in the winter season, as has been stated by the Costa del Sol Tourist Board at the World Travel Market in London.

Traditionally, sun, beach and golf have been the key demands of the Costa del Sol, but recently are also increasing cultural and urban tourism, and inland routes. Malaga seeks to create a perfect product on the Costa del Sol to offer 12 months a year.

Currently, seventeen cities in the UK offer flights to Malaga, being London, Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds the cities with mayor passenger numbers. In addition, 92.7% usually travel to the Costa del Sol with cheap airlines.

Some of the low cost airlines with connection from the UK to Malaga Airport are  EasyJet, Ryanair, Aer Lingus, Monarch, Flybe and Jet2.com.

However, British Airways, one of the strongest airlines in the UK, currently does not consider offering flights connecting Malaga with Heathrow airport, which ceased operations last March. Thus, Malaga tourism sector will have to survive the winter without a direct route to Heathrow, the largest hub in Europe for international flights.

This route is key to the activity of all tourist segments, but especially important for incentives, congresses or meetings, which thanks to the connection with London airport provided access to the Costa del Sol from anywhere in the world.

For British passengers who travel to Malaga is also more convenient the Heathrow terminal as it is situated closer to the British capital and has better communications.

The airline Delta has announced that it will resume next summer direct flights between Malaga airport and New York; a route which will operate from June 2 with a frequency of five flights per week in collaboration with Air France KLM.

Costumers traveling from Malaga will have access to more than 45 connections in the U.S. from the airport John F. Kennedy in New York, among which are outstanding Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta, as the airline said today in a statement.

According to the regional director of sales for Delta in Spain, Malaga is an important point of the Spanish network of this company and thus they are “thrilled” with the return of the route on which the airline will operate a Boeing 757-200 with 170 seats.

The Malaga-New York flight is the only direct connection between Andalusia and the United States, thus the tourism industry hopes that it will become permanent and that the company does not operate the route only during summer, as it does today.

In October 2009, Delta had suspended the connection it had started in June 2008 to the Costa del Sol on a permanent basis, and re-established the service in May 2010 for the summer season.

Since then, the direct flight is valid only in summer, which led the Ministry of Tourism to propose Iberia the possibility of operating this route on a regular basis, a proposal that the airline has not yet accepted.

Malaga airport is the third in Spain in activity of low cost airlines and the sixth regarding traditional companies.

Eight out of ten passengers who have passed through the facilities of Malaga airport-Costa del Sol in the first ten months of the year have arrived on board of a low cost aircraft, according to data provided today by the Institute of Tourism Studies. These carriers brought to the province of Malaga 3.6 million passengers until October, compared with 960,961 passengers transported over the same period by traditional companies.

The proportion in the use of low cost carriers on the Costa del Sol is well above the national average, in which the business of cheap flights represents 57% of total aircraft movements in the year to date.

This significant breach in the Costa del Sol between traditional and low cost airlines becomes clear by numbers, as Malaga airport is the third airport in Spain by volume of travelers from low cost carriers, only preceded by the airports of Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona.

In contrast, Malaga airport is only sixth in the country in the ranking of traditional airlines, surpassed even by terminals such as Tenerife or Gran Canaria, in addition to major airports such as Madrid, Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca.

Andalusia is one of the five main regions of destinations for low cost flights along with Balearic Islands, Catalonia, the Canary Islands and Valencia.

The airline Lufthansa announced today an increase of 375% of its flights arriving or departing from Berlin on the occasion of the opening in June 2012 of the new International Airport Willy Brandt in the German capital.

The major European airline will fly from these dates directly from Berlin to 30 new destinations in Europe and the Middle East, including Spanish airports in Barcelona, Malaga, Palma de Mallorca and Valencia.

Lufthansa’s compromise with the German capital, whose new airport will be the third largest in Germany after Frankfurt and Munich, involves investments in land worth 60 million Euros and an increase in its permanent fleet in the city to 15 aircrafts.