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Palma.—Up until the end of October this year, 7.8 million passengers flew in and out of Balearic airports using low cost airlines, the Institute for Tourist Studies (IET) confirmed yesterday.

The Balearics maintained a top pole position for the first ten months of the year, said the IET, reporting that the Islands accounted for 24 percent of all low cost traffic in Spain over the period.

The Institute, which reports to Central Government, said the figure for the Balearics was up 4.2 percent in comparison with the same period last year.The same report said that the Islands lost -0.1% of low cost passengers in September in comparison with the same month in 2011. But the 735'004 who flew in and out of the Balearics in September accounted for 22.1 percent of the total amount of low cost passengers in the country that month.

Balearic leadership
Catalonia followed behind the Islands over the first ten months of 2012, claiming 22.3 percent (7.3 million passengers) of low cost airline traffic, and the Canary Islands with 4.9 million passengers for the period. Low cost airline traffic from January to October, said the IET accounted for 58.7 percent of all aircraft traffic in Spain.

In October alone, low cost airline travel accounted for 60.1% of all air traffic.
At a national level, low cost airlines transported 32.9 million passengers during the first ten months of the year, an upturn of 1.7% in comparison with the same period in 2011.

Analysing the key client markets , the United Kingdom and Germany were the top users of low cost airlines from January to October, 36.1% and 19.7% respectively of the total number of users. The UK market (11.8 million passengers) was slightly down on the same period in 2011, by 0.1%. Meanwhile, the 6.4 million German passengers which came to Spain over the same period was 0.6% down on the same period in 2011.

In third place, providing 3.2 million passengers over the first ten months of the year came Italy, down 3.3% for the same period in 2011. French passenger numbers were up by 15% to 2 million, claiming 6.1% of the total low cost travel to Spain.