Alicante Airport
Alicante-Elche Airport (IATA: ALC, ICAO: LEAL), at El Altet and within the municipal boundaries of Elche, is located 9 km southwest of Alicante and 10 km east of the city of Elche (Comunidad Valenciana). Due to its location, the airport serves a large part of the Spanish Levantine coast (Costa Blanca). Traditionally it has had significant charter traffic. Currently most of the traffic is regular and international.
It occupies sixth place in the Spanish airport network in terms of passengers, after Madrid-Barajas, Barcelona airport, Palma Airport de Mallorca, Malaga and Gran Canaria airports, and among the fifty highest transit airports in Europe. Following the statistical results of December 2010, it ranks 40th in the European network for passenger traffic. It is also the airport with the highest passenger traffic in the Valencian Community.
The year 2011 marked a historic step for the future of Alicante Airport. With the start of the summer season, in fact, the new terminal of the air terminal (under construction since 2005) was inaugurated, multiplying the previous area by six and doubling the capacity of the airport. Subsequently, the existing passenger processing facilities (Terminals 1 and 2) were taken out of service.
In 2010 it had 9,382,935 passengers (an increase of 2.7% over 2009), carried out 74,474 operations (an increase of 0.3% over 2009) and handled 3,112,660 kg (a decrease of 2.7% over 2009). The increase in passenger numbers reflects a gradual recovery in the air transport sector following the global economic crisis. Passenger traffic shows signs of gradual recovery since the second half of 2009, mainly in the domestic market.
The growth in airport traffic is part of a context of gradual recovery in the aviation sector. It highlights the efforts of the British company Jet2 with three new destinations and the Irish company Ryanair with six new destinations and the addition of a new aircraft to the Alicante base during the summer season (ten in total), plus others extending or renewing their network such as Norwegian, Vueling and Wizz Air.
Reaching this historic milestone, a new airfield is integrated with the expansion of the aircraft parking platform, new taxiways, expansion and improvement of waiting areas and repair of parts of the runway.