According to information released by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the movement of cargo and mail totalled 14.8 thousand tonnes, corresponding to a growth of 2.6 percent (-33.4 percent in February).

Note that these year-on-year changes, in March, focus on the first month of 2020 in which the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has already been “significantly” felt, it said.

For the whole of the first quarter of 2021, according to INE, the number of passengers handled at national airports fell by 84.4 percent (compared with a reduction of 15.4 percent in the first quarter of 2020).

In March 2021, 4.2 thousand aircraft landed at national airports on commercial flights, representing a year-on-year fall of 58.1 percent (-76.7 percent in February and -62.0 percent in January) and the movement of 436.3 thousand passengers (between boardings, landings and direct transits) was recorded, representing a year-on-year fall of 78.1 percent (-92.9 percent in February and -79.3 percent in January).

The movement of cargo and mail totalled 14.8 thousand tones, corresponding to a growth of 2.6 percent (-33.4 percent in February and -30.2 percent in January).

Considering passengers disembarked in the national airports in March 2021, around 57 percent corresponded to international traffic (82 percent in the same period), mostly from airports located in the European continent (49 percent).
As for passengers embarking, around 54 percent were international (84 percent in the same period last year), with the main destination being airports in mainland Europe (46 percent), INE said.

Comparing the number of aircraft landed and the number of passengers disembarked daily between January and March 2021 with the same period in 2020, in the second half of March, which coincides with the beginning of the restrictions adopted at the level of airspace due to the pandemic, specifically in the last days of this month there is a reversal of the trend and growth of both indicators.

These indicators remained, however, at very low levels with reference to the traffic registered in the same period before the pandemic crisis, INE said.