EasyJet Lands new Madrid Base

Andy Harrison, EasyJet’s Chief Executive, has officially opened the company’s 17th base at Madrid’s Barajas airport. The airline expects to carry over two million passengers from Madrid in 2007 on 18 routes -three domestic, thirteen European and two to North Africa.

Four brand-new Airbus A319 aircraft will be permanently based at Madrid Airport, the largest airport on the Iberian Peninsula, from February. The initial investment of £170 million will create 150 jobs for pilots and cabin crew at EasyJet.

Spain is one of EasyJet’s fastest growing markets. Last year EasyJet launched 13 new routes to and from Spain and the airline has already announced a further 13 routes to and from Spain to be opened this year.

Currently EasyJet offers 79 routes from 12 Spanish airports and Spain now accounts for 29 percent of the total EasyJet route network.

In 2006, 8.4 million passengers flew with EasyJet on routes to and from Spain -a 15 percent increase compared to 2005, when the airline carried 7.3 million passengers in Spain. This year, EasyJet expects to carry over nine million passengers, which would constitute a further growth of around 15 percent.

Last year EasyJet carried about 33.5 million passengers, compared to 28 million on Iberia -making EasyJet 20 percent bigger than Spain’s national airline.