After Four Years of Vacancy, Spain’s “Ghost Airport” Is Finally Welcoming an Airline
Joe Cortez March 11, 2015
Spanish airport Castellon-Costa Azahar, unoccupied since opening in 2011, will soon be utilized by Ryanair.
A Spanish airport that stood vacant for over four years will soon greet its first tenant airline — Ryanair. Reuters reports the Irish low-cost carrier announced the move on Wednesday, with plans to begin flights to Castellon-Costa Azahar Airport in September.
Ryanair will begin selling tickets for flights to the “ghost airport” from London Stanstead and Bristol beginning Friday. The newly announced flights are a strong fit between Ryanair’s model of serving secondary airports across Europe with the airline’s visible presence in Spain.
The low-cost carrier transported over 32 million passengers in the southwestern European nation in 2014, making Ryanair the busiest airline in Spain. The new route is the 24th airport serviced by the airline, which has a strong reputation of driving traffic to secondary airports in Europe.
“There are a lot of airports in Europe who want to talk to Ryanair,” analyst Mark Simpson from Goodbody told Reuters. “They see them as an anchor tenant who can help stimulate the market.”
Castellon-Costa Azahar Airport was constructed in 2011 and cost around $160 million to complete. Since it’s opening, the airport has been unable to attract a regular tenant, due in part to construction problems and political turmoil. Ryanair’s new service has the capacity to deliver up to 60,000 passengers to the airport annually on five flights per week.
[Photo: Sanbec via Wikimedia]
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Personally it is a great idea to finally use the airport, if Ryanair turn up so will business.
I think a daily flight to BLV would be appropriate.
pinniped- you forgot that departing AND arriving passengers are counted
Does sound like the "cheapos" are already counting (not mentioned in the article) on getting at least a 3rd destination or up the frequency to daily on the 2 actual ones soon enough, then you could have at least > 160 passengers / flight average to provide those 60K / year, otherwise it's pure BLUFF (not a rare thing talking about airlines like Ryanair in EU or Spirit in USA).
Maybe they have designated this route as a launch destination for their planned stand-up aircraft http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/48264000/gif/_48264943_vertical_seats466x270.gif