To boost Barcelona's airport connectivity, promoting new routes, improving existing ones, and recovering those that fell with the pandemic. This is the objective with which the Barcelona Air Route Development Committee (CDRA) works, integrated by the Generalitat, the Barcelona City Council, Aena, and the Cambra de Comerç. The institutions especially focus on five destinations that currently do not have a direct connection with El Prat: Shanghai, Lima, Delhi, and Tokyo, in addition to Hong Kong, which will resume direct flights to Barcelona in June.
These five cities are the main ones among about forty destinations that the CDRA has identified as priorities for the city. The organization works closely with airlines to facilitate these routes, which would allow the recovery of destinations lost with the pandemic, such as Shanghai, Lima, Delhi, and Hong Kong. For its part, the direct connection with Tokyo from Barcelona remains an objective that is worked on "continuously" with Japanese airlines, according to the president of CDRA and secretary of Mobility and Infrastructures of the Generalitat, Marc Sanglas. "We do it every year and many times, and we continue to put arguments on the table to establish this route," he assured at the presentation of the CDRA's strategic plan for 2024 and 2025, along with the president of the Cambra, Josep Santacreu; the Airport director, Eva Valenzuela, and the City Council commissioner Pau Solanilla.
These five cities have been prioritized based on an exhaustive study and with the aim of increasing El Prat's intercontinental air traffic. Among the forty identified destinations, locations such as Orlando, Houston, Vancouver, Cali, Rio de Janeiro, Manila, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Johannesburg, and Riyadh, among others, are also included. This is reflected in the CDRA's strategic plan for this year and 2025, in which it aims to increase direct intercontinental flight seats by 23%. This figure translates into an increase from 3.10 million direct intercontinental passengers in 2023 to 3.71 million in 2025, a similar amount to that reached in 2019, before the pandemic. This increase will also be palpable in the number of flights: in 2023, El Prat operated an average of 276 weekly intercontinental frequencies, compared to 304 in 2019.
El Prat's total number of passengers increased by 20% compared to 2022, reaching almost 50 million, 5% below pre-pandemic 2019Looking ahead to 2024, El Prat will recover the direct route to Hong Kong with Cathay Pacific, which will begin operating again after a halt due to the pandemic. It will do so starting June 17 and initially with three weekly flights. New intercontinental connections from Barcelona are also planned with San Francisco on United Airlines flights, and with Dallas via Level.The fact that this airline is based in Barcelona and has initiated procedures to obtain its own Air Operator Certificate (AOC) independently of Iberia opens up the prospect of increasing intercontinental destinations. "Having a long-haul company based in Barcelona makes things much easier," Santacreu emphasized.
In addition to promoting new routes, the CDRA also works to increase the frequency or deseasonalize some that already operate from El Prat and have potential for improvement. Some of these are San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington DC, which fly only during the summer season, and Buenos Aires, Beijing, and Singapore, which offer flights year-round but with low frequency.
Improving these routes and adding new ones are goals that the CDRA sets after a 2023 in which the total number of passengers at El Prat increased by 20% compared to 2022, reaching almost 50 million, 5% below 2019. The infrastructure expects to recover pre-pandemic figures this year, after a turning point occurred in November: since then, each month has closed with more passengers than those registered in the same period of 2019. A recovery that is progressing at different rates depending on the market, as the Asian market is still close to 40% below pre-pandemic figures, Valenzuela detailed.
In addition to expanding and improving the air routes of the Catalan capital, the organization includes among its strategic objectives for this and next year to advance in sustainability, as well as to increase the air cargo passing through El Prat. With 2023 still below 2019, mainly due to the behavior of the Asian market, the goal is to achieve a 12% increase in air cargo at the terminal by 2025.
All of this in a context where the eventual expansion of El Prat Airport is under debate. This possibility is being addressed in the recently constituted technical commission on the improvement of the infrastructure between the Department of Territory of the Generalitat and the Ministry of Transport, as recalled by CDRA representatives. Without taking a position on the eventual expansion, Solanilla has argued that greater connectivity contributes to improving the quality of tourism and attracting congresses such as the MWC, which starts on Monday, and the recently held ISE, while Santacreu has pointed out that it facilitates the entry of new markets and companies into Barcelona, to consolidate it "as a multimodal logistics hub that is a reference in the world." This technical commission on El Prat and its improvement —not just expansion— aims to reach conclusions by the end of 2024, starting from the current preliminary phase of structuring the work plan.
Since the Generalitat, City Council, Cambra, and Aena conspired in 2005 to create CDRA and attract routes to Barcelona, the Airport has tripled the number of destinations it provides access to, going from 17 to 50. Of these, 17 were closed after 2020. This was after an interruption caused by the pandemic, which led to the cessation of operations of multiple routes from the Catalan capital, which has recovered most of them and continues to advance not only to match 2019 levels but to go beyond.