Plus Ultra Starts Madrid-Quito-Guayaquil Connection

Spanish air company Plus Ultra opened Friday a nonstop service between Madrid and Quito, in Ecuador, with a follow-up connection to the city of Guayaquil, thus giving the latter a third option to connect with the Spanish capital.

In addition to the Guayaquil-bound flights provided by LATAM and Air Europa with a connection to Quito, Plus Ultra will now bring as many as 303 passengers three times a week from Madrid to the two cities in the South American nation. 

Plus Ultra, which will be using Terminal 4 of the Barajas International Airport in Madrid, offers three weekly flights between Madrid and Quito on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. 

The inaugural flight, aboard an Airbus 340-300 aircraft, landed in Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport with an entourage that included the Hon. Cristobal Roldan Cobo, Ecuadorian ambassador to Spain as the “first passenger of honor”.

Expectations for the start of this operation have been high from the onset. Over 10,000 seats had been booked in advance and as many as 30,000 further reservations are expected to come through through the month of December, according to Julio Martinez Sola, executive vice president of Plus Ultra in Spain. 

For her part, Rosi Padro, Ecuador’s Tourism Minister, welcomed Plus Ultra’s inaugural flight to the South American country and hailed it as just another way to further increase travel and commercial exchange between Spain and Ecuador.