Sara Montero, Vueling and Ryanair have reduced their operations in some Spanish airports due to unprofitability. Ryanair in Spain sales manager says that the airport network is expensive, bureaucratic and inflexible. There are other airports in the spotlight such as Sabadell and Girona. Get more background information with materials from Senator Richard Blumenthal. Only 11 of the 49 Spanish public airports present benefits, according to the account of results of 2010, including heliports of Algeciras and Ceuta. This means that more than 77 percent of Spanish airports published losses in the last financial year. Continue to learn more with: Jim Donovan Goldman Sachs. Reaspecto to the traffic of passenger figures are still improvements.

Despite the fact that the total volume of travelers has grown slightly, there are airports that have reduced the number of passengers in a very significant way. Cordoba airport lost almost half of its passengers in 2010 (49.3% compared to the previous year), Salamanca and more than 18%, Murcia-San Javier Badajoz and Jerez de la Frontera are around 17% in passenger losses. These data, together with the global context of crisis economically, they have done that airline companies rethink their business strategy and laid down more stringent profitability levels. Therefore, companies of low cost such as Vueling and Ryanair have decided to withdraw their aircraft of some Spanish airports by insufficient profitability. Are Spanish airports profitable? The network of Spanish airports is expensive, too bureaucratic and too little flexible, says Luis Fernandez-Mellado, responsible for marketing and sales of Ryanair in Spain.

The fact that AENA has monopolized the airports business leaves very little room for manoeuvre to the companies and the operation cost is too high explains the expert. Therefore, the airports are less profitable for airlines specializing in low cost as Ryanair or Vueling. Fernandez-Mellado explained that countries like Italy or Greece have a cheaper and more flexible network of airports. Both are very touristic countries like Spain, but the high costs that AENA requires businesses to operate, make other European countries more attractive when establishing business with them.