It's just so easy

Easyjet carried the most passengers into Malaga Airport in 2008, flying more than 2.1 million visitors into the Costa del Sol city, an increase of 16.7 per cent y-o-y, according to figures released by the Spanish Airports Authority (AENA)...

The Authority revealed that Monarch came second on the list, jetting in 804,000 passengers, a drop of 15.8 per cent on 2007 when it was actually the fourth most active carrier to Malaga.

Between easyJet and Monarch, the two airlines represented around 25 per cent of all passenger traffic to the city. Over five million people visited the region, via Malaga Airport, in 2008.

Iberia airline's passenger numbers were down to 722,901, a 17 per cent drop y-o-y. The impact of easyJet is most widely felt by Iberia which used to hold top spot until 2005. Following Iberia was Spanair, Air Europa, Ryanair, Thomson Airways, Transavia and Clickair.

The AENA data also found that the new Delta Airlines route from New York to Malaga has carried over 33,500 passengers since June and looks set to feature significantly in 2009's list.

The body also said that, while its domestic passenger numbers saw a reduction, international visitors to the country continued to grow. The UK was the single biggest tourist group to the country with 34,779,158 visitors, according to the AENA, followed by Germany (21,990,447), Italy (9,905,118) and France (8,452,880). In terms of visitors from outside the EU, the USA was the biggest group (2,238,366), followed by Morocco (1,058,067), Argentina (978,711), Mexico (939,858) and Brazil (721,187).

The AENA figures are representative of all airport traffic in the country and include internal and external flights to Spain.

Source: OPP