Low-cost carrier Ryanair says that they don’t see any falls in UK visitor numbers flying into Alicante-Elche airport because of Brexit and the current falls in the exchange rate between the pound and the euro. The comments came after Valencian political leaders expressed concern about the possible uncertainty of what might happen in regard to UK tourists over the next few years.
Speaking at the launch of Ryanair’s routes for next summer, the company’s marketing director for Spain, José Espartero, said that the Costa Blanca region “is very powerful, and even though their spending power might be reduced, British tourists are still very much drawn by the area.”
The flight schedule for the period between March and October 2017 includes four new summer services to Aberdeen, Belfast, Glasgow, and Gatwick, in addition to extra services to Leeds-Bradford, Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle.
Espartero claimed that the service extensions will see an additional 400 thousand people use Alicante-Elche airport, taking figures to around four million passengers a year, adding that the company will be running 54 routes to and from the facility at El Altet, contributing to keeping some three thousand jobs at the airport. The flight levels and passenger numbers though only will return to what Ryanair had at Alicante-Elche back in 2010, before the carrier withdrew a whole raft of flights in a dispute over the use of passenger air bridges at the new airport terminal.
