Don't Panic!

This health crisis has wrought havoc upon low-cost air companies, putting not only jobs but also established routes into jeopardy.

This is precisely what Federico García Lorca Granada-Jaén Airport is worried about; fearing the long-term loss of Easy Jet and Vueling flights connecting our province and Jaén with other cities in Spain as well as international destinations.

So, does it appear that the low-cost airlines are sat around calculators, working out whether it’s better to stay or to go with their fingers crossed that frontiers will open up and they can fly people in and out? Well, nobody has said that they are packing their bags so far and on the contrary, the are talking about future plans.

Vueling, for example, normally connects Granada to Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife, Gran Canaria and Bilbao. The international flight to Paris has been suspended for the duration of the crisis. Andalucia, claims the company, especially Granada, is very important to them.

As things stand, Vueling has been looking at the 22nd of June to get their Barcelona flight back into the air, running three times a week. There might even be a weekly flight to Palma; a far cry from the daily flights to this destination before the Lock Down.

But what of Air Europa? Well, from the 1st of July it has plans to run a flight to Palma de Mallorca with five flights a week – before the crisis there was one a day.

At the moment, the Aeropuerto Federico García Lorca hibernates, almost, with all its activity reduced by 94.2%: during the whole of April there were 61 flights, which was about two days’ traffic during April, 2019. Those flights ranged from 18 passenger flights, nine freight flights, plus medical flights, air taxis and police aircraft using the airport.

(News: Vega, Granada, Andalucia)