Record number of flights over the first two months of 2023. | Rafael Garcia Sánchez

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For January and February, a record number of seats will be available for flights in and out of Palma Son Sant Joan Airport.

The association that coordinates airline slots, AECFA, reports that 1,168,714 seats are scheduled for January and 1,170,948 for February. These are up 30% and 24.8%, respectively, by comparison with 2019, which was a record year.

The airport's 'winter' season runs from late October to late March. For the whole period, a total of 6,368,415 seats have been made available, a rise of 8.7% compared with 2019-2020. The number of flights, a record number, is 43,243.

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The principal reason for the increase is demand from the national market. Spanish tourism grew during 2022 and continues to grow. National flights explain why Palma, according to figures from the Enaire air navigation company, had more flights in 2022 than in 2019.

However, this didn't translate into increased total passenger numbers. The airports authority Aena has yet to confirm figures for 2022, but its estimate for the whole year is 28.5 million passengers, down 1.2 million by comparison with the record year that was 2019.

The first set of tourism figures for the winter season, November's, which were released last week, indicated that foreign tourism, despite the overall increases in flights and available seats, was down from 182,833 in November 2019 to 165,403.