Alicante Airport (Alicante–Elche Airport)
Alicante–Elche Miguel Hernández Airport (Aeropuerto de Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández, Aeroport d'Alacant-Elx Miguel Hernández),, is an international airport located about 9 km southwest of the city of Alicante and about 10 km east of the city of Elche in Spain. Alicante–Elche is one of the main airports in south-eastern Spain, serving both the southern part of the Valencian Community and the Region of Murcia.
The airport is a base for Air Nostrum, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Ryanair and Vueling. Passenger traffic has increased significantly in the last decade, beating its own yearly record since 2013 to date; in 2019 it set its new consecutive record at 15 million passengers. It is one of the 50 busiest in Europe and was Spain's fifth busiest airport in 2019. Up to 80% of all passenger flights are international. The largest numbers of passengers arrive from the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Sweden. Popular domestic destinations are Madrid, Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona.
El Altet airport opened on 4 May 1967, replacing the older aerodrome La Rabassa that had served Alicante since 1936. It took its name after the El Altet area (a part of Elche's countryside) where it was built. The first commercial flight that landed at the airport was Convair Metropolitan by Aviaco. In November 1969, Iberia established regular connections to Madrid and Barcelona.
Historically, up until 2003, Iberia was the leading airline at the airport. With the decline of conventional airlines, low-cost EasyJet took the lead in 2004. Transatlantic service commenced from Alicante in June 2006, when an Avianca Boeing 767 touched down from Bogotá, Colombia. Alicante served as a stop on the outbound portion of the airline's once-weekly Bogotá-Barcelona flight. Two years later, Avianca announced it would eliminate the halt in Alicante after the Spanish aviation authorities granted it permission to fly nonstop to Barcelona.
In November 2007, Ryanair, the largest European low-cost airline established a base at Alicante. It has since grown to become one of the leading carriers at the airport, and by 2011 it had increased its presence further with eleven based aircraft, 62 routes, and had carried more than 3 million passengers.
In March 2011, Alicante-Elche's current terminal opened, which replaced the previous 2 terminals.
The airport is located within Elche's comarca and so there had been a historical petition from Elche to include the city's name in the official name of the airport. On 12 July 2013, the name of the airport was officially changed from Aeropuerto de Alicante to Aeropuerto de Alicante–Elche with the IATA airport code (ALC) remaining unchanged.
In 2015, the number of passengers increased by 5,1% to 10,574,484. The passenger traffic has increased in every year since 2000, with the exception of 2009, 2012 and 2020. By 2015 the largest number of passengers was carried by Ryanair (2,992,984), followed by EasyJet (1,285,221) and Vueling (1,093,494). Norwegian Air Shuttle (893,319) is the distant fourth.
On 23 July 2016, the airport registered its busiest day of operations to date, handling 347 flights—with an average of one flight every 3 minutes—and about 58,000 passengers in a single day.
In 2020, the airport recorded more than 11 million less passengers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The airport is a base for Air Nostrum, Norwegian Air Shuttle, Ryanair and Vueling. Passenger traffic has increased significantly in the last decade, beating its own yearly record since 2013 to date; in 2019 it set its new consecutive record at 15 million passengers. It is one of the 50 busiest in Europe and was Spain's fifth busiest airport in 2019. Up to 80% of all passenger flights are international. The largest numbers of passengers arrive from the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and Sweden. Popular domestic destinations are Madrid, Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona.
El Altet airport opened on 4 May 1967, replacing the older aerodrome La Rabassa that had served Alicante since 1936. It took its name after the El Altet area (a part of Elche's countryside) where it was built. The first commercial flight that landed at the airport was Convair Metropolitan by Aviaco. In November 1969, Iberia established regular connections to Madrid and Barcelona.
Historically, up until 2003, Iberia was the leading airline at the airport. With the decline of conventional airlines, low-cost EasyJet took the lead in 2004. Transatlantic service commenced from Alicante in June 2006, when an Avianca Boeing 767 touched down from Bogotá, Colombia. Alicante served as a stop on the outbound portion of the airline's once-weekly Bogotá-Barcelona flight. Two years later, Avianca announced it would eliminate the halt in Alicante after the Spanish aviation authorities granted it permission to fly nonstop to Barcelona.
In November 2007, Ryanair, the largest European low-cost airline established a base at Alicante. It has since grown to become one of the leading carriers at the airport, and by 2011 it had increased its presence further with eleven based aircraft, 62 routes, and had carried more than 3 million passengers.
In March 2011, Alicante-Elche's current terminal opened, which replaced the previous 2 terminals.
The airport is located within Elche's comarca and so there had been a historical petition from Elche to include the city's name in the official name of the airport. On 12 July 2013, the name of the airport was officially changed from Aeropuerto de Alicante to Aeropuerto de Alicante–Elche with the IATA airport code (ALC) remaining unchanged.
In 2015, the number of passengers increased by 5,1% to 10,574,484. The passenger traffic has increased in every year since 2000, with the exception of 2009, 2012 and 2020. By 2015 the largest number of passengers was carried by Ryanair (2,992,984), followed by EasyJet (1,285,221) and Vueling (1,093,494). Norwegian Air Shuttle (893,319) is the distant fourth.
On 23 July 2016, the airport registered its busiest day of operations to date, handling 347 flights—with an average of one flight every 3 minutes—and about 58,000 passengers in a single day.
In 2020, the airport recorded more than 11 million less passengers due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Map - Alicante Airport (Alicante–Elche Airport)
Map
Country - Spain
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Anatomically modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 42,000 years ago. The ancient Iberian and Celtic tribes, along with other pre-Roman peoples, dwelled the territory maintaining contacts with foreign Mediterranean cultures. The Roman conquest and colonization of the peninsula (Hispania) ensued, bringing the Romanization of the population. Receding of Western Roman imperial authority ushered in the migration of different non-Roman peoples from Central and Northern Europe with the Visigoths as the dominant power in the peninsula by the fifth century. In the early eighth century, most of the peninsula was conquered by the Umayyad Caliphate, and during early Islamic rule, Al-Andalus became a dominant peninsular power centered in Córdoba. Several Christian kingdoms emerged in Northern Iberia, chief among them León, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and Navarre made an intermittent southward military expansion, known as Reconquista, repelling the Islamic rule in Iberia, which culminated with the Christian seizure of the Emirate of Granada in 1492. Jews and Muslims were forced to choose between conversion to Catholicism or expulsion, and eventually the converts were expelled through different royal decrees.
Currency / Language
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EUR | Euro | € | 2 |
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EU | Basque language |
CA | Catalan language |
GL | Galician language |
OC | Occitan language |
ES | Spanish language |