According to Renta 4 analysts, bookings by British citizens to fly to Spain have increased by 400%. This is since the UK government announced the removal of the quarantine requirement on return to the country for those travelling to amber zones, including Spain, as of yesterday. AENA had 489 operations scheduled for yesterday between Spain and the UK, three times more than a week ago.
Meanwhile, the newspaper Expansión reports that Iberia has resumed almost all routes to Latin America, which in 2019 accounted for 60% of its revenue. Iberia is expected to connect Spain with 18 Latin American cities, with 95 weekly frequencies. In addition, there will be 5 routes to North America, with 24 frequencies. The recovery of routes and frequencies is also occurring at Air France-KLM, Iberia’s main competitor to LatAm. It has already recovered the flights to Latin American and Caribbean destinations it had in 2019. For its part, Lufthansa is estimated to be operating around 50% of its pre-pandemic capacity from Germany to LatAm.
Renta 4 analysts flag that this is “positive news, which is not being passed on to the share price. We believe that investor bias is negative. However, we understand that both the news about the strong rebound in Delta variant infections, which is mainly affecting the UK and Spain, and the continuous changes in travel regulations are making the recovery very difficult. We reiterate that the key remains vaccination and that Spain is significantly accelerating the pace in this respect. Spain is currently the fifth European country with the highest percentage of its population vaccinated (full schedule 57%, 1st vaccination 62%).
