The first four months of the year saw a 53% drop in airline and AVE users

Date : 15/06/2021
Author : Forum Business Travel

The number of travelers who chose to travel by plane to move around the interior of the country fell by 53.4% during the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2020, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE). In the case of AVE, the decrease reaches 53.7%. The percentages are higher than those recorded in March.

In the first four months of 2021 air travel fell by 53.4%, sea travel by 37.6%, rail by 17.0% and bus by 15.2%.

In total, 1.02 million travelers used the avión in April for their journeys, with a dropída of 53.4%, while travelers using the AVE totaled 584,000 users, 53.7% less than in the same month of 2020.

Both the decline in airline users and that recorded in AVE travelers was accentuated with respect to those experienced in March, drops of 30.6% and 26.5%, respectively.

According to the INE, this is because the comparison is made with the second pandemic month, April 2020, fully affected by the first state of alarm caused by the health crisis. As a result, the number of users of public transport increased more than sevenfold in April compared with the same month in 2020, to more than 261.5 million passengers, compared with 36.8 million a year earlier.

The rate of change in the number of public transport passengers in April compared to March was 5.3%. A figure that improves on last year, when it decreased by 82.5%.

INTERURBAN TRANSPORT

More than 69.3 million passengers used interurban transport in April, almost six times more than in the same month last year, when more than 10.1 million used it.

Cercanías was down 12.7% in bus transport and 14.3% in rail transport compared to the first four months of 2020. Medium-distance transport decreased by 19.7% in bus transport and 32.7% in rail transport. Finally, the long distance fell by 54.9% in bus transport and 51.8% in rail transport. Within the latter, the AVE fell by 53.7%.

For its part, more than 31.6 million users used special and discretionary transport in April, compared to more than 4.4 million in the same month of 2020. The number of special transport passengers rose 34% in the first four months of 2021 compared to the same period last year. Within this, school transport increased by 43.3% and work transport by 9.7%. In addition, occasional transport fell by 66% in the first four months of the year compared to the same period in 2020.