Spanair strengthens international connections during the winter
The Catalan airline wants to consolidate its hub at Barcelona Airport. Spanair, partially owned by the Catalan Government, plans to transform Barcelona El Prat into an international hub in its own right.
Barcelona (ACN).- Barcelona-based airline Spanair will change the flying times of its domestic routes to increase and facilitate connections with international destinations through its Barcelona hub during the winter season. In addition, the Catalan airline will strengthen its flights to Germany and will connect with Berlin five days per week. The route Barcelona - Madrid will increase its frequency on Monday with eight flights in each direction, while the route Barcelona – Algiers will have seven to nine flights per week. Furthermore, Spainair offers Nice as a new destination. All those changes will be effective from this Friday. The company has the objective to consolidate its presence in the Catalan capital and to transform Barcelona El Prat, not only in to its own hub, but also in to an international hub in its own right.
Spanair explained in a press release that it had modified the flight times of its domestic flights to Barcelona in order to continue “improving and reducing the connection times with nternational routes”. This way, most of the domestic routes will link from now on with cities such as Stockholm, Copenhaguen, Berlin, Hamburg, Banjul and Bamako. In addition, they can also link with a large number of destinations thanks to Star Alliance companies, the Catalan airline emphasised.
With these changes, Spanair wanted to foster the consolidation of the hub it has in the Airport of Barcelona. The company has the objective to increase the number of passengers per connection, as the waiting times between one flight and the next one are reduced to an average of one hour and twenty minutes. For instance, passengers coming from Ibiza can link with 29 destinations; those coming from Palma de Mallorca with 41; and those from Alacant with 37. In addition, the flight from Tel-Aviv will link with 10 destinations within Spain; the flight from Bamako with 14; the flight from Munich with 24, and the one from Hamburg with 13.
In the first six months of 2011, Spanair registered 434,000 passengers connecting with other flights through Barcelona Airport. This represents a 20% increase in comparison to the first semester of 2010. From all the travellers, 292,000 flew only between destinations directly served by Spanair, while the rest of the passengers (142,000), linked with other Star Alliance flights.