the airport of Faro it will have nine new routes operating in the summer, six of them to France. Insecurity in North Africa and the Mediterranean made airlines look for alternative destinations and the Algarve was chosen by many of them. Therefore, 2016 promises to be a year of record numbers.
Paris (Charles de Gaulle), Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille, and Vienna (Austria), Doncaster (United Kingdom) and Nuremberg (Germany) are the new destinations to which the Airport of Faro will be on, representing another 20 weekly frequencies.
The new routes were presented yesterday afternoon, in Faro, with the figures for 2015, a year that ended with 6,4 million passengers, an increase of 4,4% compared to the previous year.
In 2016, this number promises to rise and, for that, the French market will contribute greatly. “We have a 129% increase in the number of seats offered in the French market. Easyjet will bet, with strength, in several cities like Lyon, Paris (Charles de Gaulle), Toulouse… and we also have Transavia. This was a market used to moving towards other destinations, but with excellent partnerships with Easyjet and Transavia, we have achieved a magnificent year for the French customer», told journalists Alberto Mota Borges, director of the Airport of Faro, in the margin of the presentation.
The reasons for the potential “French invasion” of the Algarve are related to the safety of tourists. «There were constraints in other destinations and we have a fundamental asset in the Algarve, which is safety. This has been a factor that greatly values a destination, taking into account that there are other events that are contrary to it», said Alberto Mota Borges.
This French traffic, with the contribution of the German, also promises to bring an increase in traffic from Schengen countries. However, in traditional destinations such as the United Kingdom and Ireland (Non-Schengen), there are also predictions to rise. The United Kingdom, whose traffic is expected to increase 14%, will reach the end of the IATA summer with a share of 51%, according to ANA Aeroportos.
For the summer of 2016, the Airport of Faro it will have 1,2 million more seats and regular flight traffic is expected to grow 19%, while on charter flights the rise is 29%.
In addition to the growth, «a better distribution of airport activity throughout the year is expected, an important contribution to alleviate the seasonality of this infrastructure, in particular, and of tourism in the Algarve, in general».
This attenuation of seasonality has already started to take place since the end of October 2015, when the number of movements at the Airport of Faro usually goes down drastically. From that time until March, the airport of Faro had an increase in the number of moves of 20%.
Works must not bring complications
the airport of Faro is still under construction and this is how it will “face” the busiest summer in its history. However, Alberto Mota Borges guarantees that “everything is planned for the operation to be carried out safely, and all the subsystems [security control, safety zones check-in, boarding gates, among others] are sized to respond».
To the director of the Airport of Faro, «the works are something that we have to go through in order to have a better terminal. We cannot close the airport, so these were planned so that each of the subsystems, at every hour, can respond to the demand that we are seeing here».
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