Barcelona El Prat Airport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Barcelona Airport Aeroport de Barcelona |
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| IATA: BCN – ICAO: LEBL | |||
| Summary | |||
| Airport type | Public | ||
| Owner | Aena | ||
| Serves | Barcelona, Spain | ||
| Location | El Prat de Llobregat | ||
| Elevation AMSL | 14 ft / 4 m | ||
| Coordinates | 41°17′49″N 002°04′42″E / 41.29694°N 2.07833°ECoordinates: 41°17′49″N 002°04′42″E / 41.29694°N 2.07833°E | ||
| Website | |||
| Runways | |||
| Direction | Length | Surface | |
| m | ft | ||
| 07L/25R | 3,352 | 10,997 | Concrete |
| 07R/25L | 2,660 | 8,727 | Asphalt |
| 02/20 | 2,540 | 8,335 | Asphalt |
| Statistics (2008) | |||
| Movements | 321,491 | ||
| Passengers | 30,208,134 | ||
| Sources: EUROCONTROL[1] Statistics: Aena[2] |
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Barcelona Airport (IATA: BCN, ICAO: LEBL), commonly known as El Prat, is located 10 km (6.2 mi) southwest[1] from Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, among the municipal terms of El Prat de Llobregat, Viladecans and Sant Boi.
The airport is the second largest in Spain behind Madrid Barajas Airport, and the first in Catalonia and the Mediterranean coast.[3] It is a main hub for Spanair, Vueling Airlines, and Clickair, and a focus city for Air Europa and Iberia Airlines. The airport mainly serves domestic, European and North African destinations, also having minor flights to Southeast Asia, Latin America and North America.
The Barcelona-Madrid air shuttle service, known as the "Pont Aeri" (in Catalan) or "Puente Aéreo" (in Spanish), literally "Air Bridge", is the world's busiest route, with the highest number of flight operations (971 per week) in 2007.[4] The schedule has been reduced since February 2008, when a Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail line was opened, covering the distance in 2½ hours, and quickly became popular.
In 2008, 30,208,134 passengers used Barcelona Airport.[2], a slight decrease from 32,793,897 in 2007.
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[edit] History
Barcelona's first airfield, located at el Remolar, began operations in 1916. However, it did not have good expansion prospects, so a new airport at El Prat opened in 1918. The first plane was a Latécoère Salmson 300 which arrived from Toulouse with final destination, Casablanca. The airport was used as headquarters of the Aeroclub of Catalonia and the base for the Spanish Navy's Zeppelin fleet. Scheduled commercial service began in 1927 with an Iberia service to Madrid Cuatros Vientos Airport. This was Iberia's first route.
In 1948, a runway was built, today 07-25, in the same year the first overseas service was operated by Pan American World Airways to New York City, using a Lockheed Constellation. Between 1948 and 1952 a second runway was constructed (runway 16-34), perpendicular to the previous, also taxiways were constructed and a terminal to accommodate passengers. In 1963 the airport reached one million passengers a year. A new control tower was built in 1965 and the terminal was rebuilt in 1968 (currently the oldest wing of Terminal B).
On 3 August 1970, Pan American World Airways inaugurated regular service between Barcelona, Lisbon and New York, operated by a Boeing 747SP. On 4 November of the same year, Iberia began the "Air-shuttle" service between Barcelona and Madrid-Barajas. A few years later, in 1976, a terminal was built specifically for Iberia's air-shuttle service and a terminal exclusively for cargo, an annexed mail service and an aircraft ramp for air cargo. In 1977 the airport handled over 5 million passengers annually.
From late seventies to early nineties the airport was stalled in traffic and investments until the 1992 Summer Olympics held in Barcelona. El Prat underwent a major development consisting in the modernization and expansion of the existing terminal (terminal B) and the construction of the other two (A and C terminals) which included jetways for direct access to the aircraft. This reform was designed by architect Ricardo Bofill Levi. In 1996, a new control tower was inaugurated also designed by Ricardo Bofill Levi.
Due to the strong drop in air traffic after 1999 and the crisis in the aviation sector in 2001 many charter operations from Girona and Reus were diverted to El Prat, which helped the airport to endure the crisis.
[edit] Notable accidents and incidents
- On 21 October 1994 a Falcon 20 cargo aircraft made an emergency landing at the airport after suffering a malfunction in its landing gear, none of the three crewmembers were injured.
- On 19 February 1998, two people, the commander and the pilot died in an Ibertrans general aviation plane crash in the borough of Gavá shortly after taking off from El Prat.
- On 28 July 1998 a general aviation cargo plane carrying press from Mallorca crashed next to one of the fences surrounding the airport, killing two crew members and co-pilot.
- In 2002, a Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, which originated in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow, collided with DHL Flight 611 over Germany en route to Barcelona.[5]
[edit] El Prat today
Most of the traffic at Barcelona Airport is domestic and European. In which Iberia and Spanair have an operational base. However, the number of intercontinental connections is well below other European airports with their level of passenger traffic. The lack of intercontinental connections has been a constant cause of complaint and pressure by the authorities and Catalan groups in recent years, who want the airport to become a centre of world air traffic distribution and not just European.
In recent years the traffic of low-cost airlines has grown significantly, especially after the creation of operating bases from Vueling and Clickair at the airport. There are other low-cost airlines operating from the airport including easyJet, SkyEurope and WizzAir.
The airport has 3 runways, two parallel, nominated 07L/25R and 07R/25L (the latter opened in 2004), and a cross runway 02/20. There are two terminals: T1 and T2, which is the sum of the previous Terminal A, B and C. The two terminals have a combined total of 268 check-in counters and 64 boarding gates. Operations at the airport are restricted exclusively to IFR (instrumental flights), except for sanitary VFR flights, emergency and government.
A plan for expansion (Plan Barcelona)[6] includes a third terminal building (also designed by Ricardo Bofill) and control tower. An additional runway (07R/25L) has also been built. Once these developments are complete in 2009, the airport will be capable of handling 55 million passengers annually (compared to 32.8 million passengers in 2007). The airport is slated to expand in area from 8.45 to 15.33 square kilometres (3.26 to 5.92 sq mi) by 2009. A further expansion is planned to be finished by 2012, with a new satellite terminal which will raise the capacity to 70 million passengers annually.
The airport is the subject of a political discussion over the management and control between the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Spanish Government, which has involved AENA (airport manager) and various airlines, Iberia and Spanair mainly. Part of the controversy is about the benefits that the airport generates, which are used in maintenance and investments in other airports in the network of AENA and government investments in other economic areas.
[edit] Statistics
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Font: Aeroport de Barcelona, AENA. |
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[edit] Ground transportation
[edit] Rail
The airport is accessible by RENFE commuter train on the line 
Nord , which runs from the Maçanet-Massanes station, with major stops at Barcelona Sants railway station and the fairly central Passeig de Gràcia railway station to provide transfer to the Barcelona Metro system. As part of the major expansion above, a new railway station will be built nearby, connecting the airport to the Spanish AVE network, and Line 9 of the Barcelona Metro.
[edit] Bus
The Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) public bus on line 46 runs every 25 minutes from Plaça Espanya. A scheduled private bus line (Aerobús) from Plaça Catalunya, stops at Sants and Plaça d'Espanya. Taxi stops are available at each terminal. The C-32B highway connects the airport to a main traffic interchange between Barcelona's Ronda de Dalt beltway and major motorways.
[edit] Airport parking
Barcelona Airport has approximately 11,900 parking spaces, 2,009 of them are in the parking buiding, placed in front of Terminal C, which it is connected to the airport by a covered corridor. In front of Terminal A is the other parking buiding, which adds approximately 2,600 more spaces, this building is being extended with the construction of two new levels. The remainder are distributed in other areas on the exterior, in front of the terminal buildings and offices buildings, and, approximately, add about 7,200 spaces more.
[edit] Terminal 1 Sud
The new terminal T1-Sud, designed by Ricardo Bofill was inaugurated on 17 June 2009. The new terminal T1 has an area of 525,000 m2, and an aircraft ramp of 600,000 m2.
Its facilities includes
- 168 check-in counters
- 50 jetways
- 15 baggage carousels (one of the new carousel is equivalent to 4 carousels in the old terminal) and
- 12,000 parking spaces, in addition to the 11,900 already in the terminal 2 (current Terminals A, B, C).
The forecast is that the airport will be able to handle 55 million passengers annually and will reach 90 operations an hour.
The extension of the airport with a total investment of €5.1 billion in the future will include a new satellite terminal and refurbishment of existing terminals. The civil engineering phase of the South Terminal has been made possible by a budget of €900 million.
[edit] Terminal Moves
- At the end of September, OneWorld member airlines and Vueling will move from Terminal 2 to the new Terminal 1
- At the end of 2009 SkyTeam member airlines and all non-aligned airlines serving intercontinental destinations will move from Terminal 2 to the new Terminal 1
[edit] Airlines and destinations
[edit] Terminal T1
| Airlines | Destinations |
|---|---|
| Adria Airways | Ljubljana [seasonal] |
| Aegean Airlines | Athens |
| Air Baltic | Riga |
| Austrian Airlines | Vienna |
| Austrian Airlines operated by Tyrolean Airways | Vienna |
| Blue1 | Helsinki |
| Brussels Airlines | Brussels |
| Croatia Airlines | Zagreb [seasonal] |
| EgyptAir | Cairo, Luxor |
| Estonian Air | Tallinn [seasonal] |
| LOT Polish Airlines | Warsaw |
| Lufthansa | Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Milan-Malpensa, Munich |
| Lufthansa Regional operated by Eurowings | Düsseldorf |
| Lufthansa Regional operated by Lufthansa CityLine | Munich, Stuttgart |
| Scandinavian Airlines System | Copenhagen, Oslo-Gardermoen, Stockholm-Arlanda |
| Singapore Airlines | Singapore1 |
| Spanair | A Coruña, Algiers, Alicante, Asturias, Banjul, Bilbao, Copenhagen, Fuerteventura, Granada, Ibiza, Jerez de la Frontera, Lanzarote, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Madrid, Malaga, Minorca, Munich, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, Stockholm-Arlanda, Tenerife-North, Tenerife-South, Valencia, Vigo |
| Swiss International Air Lines | Geneva, Zürich |
| Swiss operated by Swiss European Airlines | Basel/Mulhouse |
| TAP Portugal | Lisbon |
| TAP operated by Portugalia | Lisbon, Porto |
| Turkish Airlines | Istanbul-Atatürk |
| US Airways | Philadelphia [seasonal] |
1: Singapore Airlines flights make a stop in Milan-Malpensa, but Singapore Airlines has no rights to carry passengers between Milan-Malpensa and Barcelona.
[edit] Terminal T2A
| Airlines | Destinations |
|---|---|
| Aer Lingus | Belfast-International [ends 23 October], Cork, Dublin |
| Aeroflot | Moscow-Sheremetyevo |
| Aerolíneas Argentinas | Buenos Aires-Ezeiza |
| AeroMéxico | Mexico City |
| Air Algérie | Algiers |
| Air Arabia Maroc | Casablanca |
| Alitalia | Milan-Linate, Rome-Fiumicino |
| Alitalia operated by Air One | Rome-Fiumicino |
| Ándalus Líneas Aéreas | Gibraltar, Nador, Tangier |
| Arkefly | Amsterdam [seasonal] |
| Arkia Israel Airlines | Tel Aviv |
| Atlas Blue | Marrakech, Tangier |
| Avianca | Bogotá |
| Blue Air | Bucharest-Băneasa |
| Bmibaby | Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester |
| Bulgaria Air | Sofia |
| Czech Airlines | Prague |
| Delta Air Lines | Atlanta, New York-JFK |
| Finnair | Helsinki |
| Germanwings | Cologne/Bonn, Stuttgart |
| Iceland Express | Reykjavik-Keflavik |
| Icelandair | Reykjavik-Keflavik [seasonal] |
| Jet2.com | Leeds/Bradford |
| Jet4You | Casablanca, Nador, Tangier |
| Meridiana | Florence |
| Monarch Airlines | Manchester |
| MyAir | Bari, Venice-Marco Polo |
| Norwegian Air Shuttle | Oslo-Gardermoen |
| Pakistan International Airlines | Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore |
| Rossiya | St Petersburg |
| Royal Air Maroc | Casablanca, Tangier |
| Royal Jordanian | Amman |
| SkyEurope | Bratislava, Vienna |
| Transaero Airlines | Moscow-Domodedovo, St Petersburg |
| transavia.com | Amsterdam, Copenhagen |
| Tunisair | Tunis |
| Ukraine International Airlines | Kiev-Boryspil, Lviv |
| VIM Airlines | Moscow-Domodedovo |
| Wind Jet | Catania, Forli, Palermo |
| Wizz Air | Budapest, Cluj-Napoca, Katowice, Sofia, Timişoara |
[edit] Terminal T2B
| Airlines | Destinations |
|---|---|
| Air Berlin | Berlin-Tegel, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Palma de Mallorca |
| Air Europa | Fuerteventura [seasonal], Ibiza, Lanzarote, La Palma [seasonal], Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Madrid, Minorca, Palma de Mallorca, Tenerife-North, Tenerife-South, Tunis |
| Air France | Paris-Charles de Gaulle |
| Air France operated by Brit Air | Lyon, Paris-Orly |
| Air France operated by Régional | Bordeaux, Nantes |
| Air Transat | Montréal-Trudeau, Toronto-Pearson, Vancouver |
| American Airlines | New York-JFK |
| British Airways | London-Gatwick [ends 24 October], London-Heathrow |
| British Airways operated by BA CityFlyer | London-City [ends 23 October] |
| Continental Airlines | Newark |
| easyJet | Belfast-International, Berlin-Schönefeld, Bristol, Dortmund, East Midlands, Liverpool, London-Gatwick, London-Luton, London-Stansted, Lyon, Milan-Malpensa, Newcastle, Paris-Charles de Gaulle |
| easyJet Switzerland | Basel/Mulhouse, Geneva |
| El Al | Tel Aviv |
| Flyglobespan | Edinburgh, Glasgow-International |
| Iberia | London-Heathrow |
| KLM | Amsterdam |
| Luxair | Luxembourg |
| Sun d'Or International Airlines | Tel Aviv |
| TAROM | Bucharest-Otopeni |
| Vueling Airlines | A Coruña, Alicante, Amsterdam, Asturias, Athens, Bilbao, Brussels, Bucharest-Otopeni, Budapest, Casablanca, Dubrovnik, Granada, Ibiza, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Lisbon, Jerez de la Frontera, Lisbon, Madrid, Malaga, Malta, Marrakech, Milan-Malpensa, Minorca, Moscow-Domodedovo, Naples, Nice, Palermo, Paris-Orly, Pisa, Prague, Rome-Fiumicino, Santiago de Compostela, Seville, St Petersburg, Tenerife-North, Venice, Verona, Vienna, Vigo, Warsaw |
[edit] Terminal T2C
| Airlines | Destinations |
|---|---|
| Iberia | Madrid |
| Iberia operated by Air Nostrum | Albacete, Almeria, Badajoz, Bologna, Burgos, Catania [begins 25 July], Ciudad Real, Corfu [begins 26 July], Leon, Logroño [ends 23 July], Marseilles, Murcia, Nantes, Nice, Olbia [begins 25 July], Pamplona, Salamanca, San Sebastián, Santander, Tangier [begins 25 July], Turin, Valencia, Valladolid |
[edit] Cargo airlines
| Airlines | Destinations |
|---|---|
| British Airways World Cargo | East Midlands, London-Heathrow, London-Luton |
| Cargolux | Hong Kong, Jeddah, Luxembourg |
| DHL | Vitoria-Gasteiz |
| Emirates SkyCargo | Dubai, Mexico City |
| FedEx Express | Paris-Charles de Gaulle |
| Jade Cargo International | Brescia, Shanghai-Pudong, Shenzhen |
| Swiftair | |
| TNT Airways | Liege, Brussels |
| United Parcel Service | Cologne/Bonn, Valencia |
[edit] References
- Zunino, Eric (November 2004) "Barcelona Airport", Airline World, pp. 40–43.
- ^ a b EUROCONTROL basic
- ^ a b 2008 aircraft movements, passengers and cargo traffic
- ^ 2007 aircraft movments, passengers and cargo traffic
- ^ OAG reveals latest industry intelligence on the busiest routes
- ^ Gallagher, Paul. "Jet pilot's 14 seconds dilemma before fatal crash". scotsman.com. http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=455&id=738632002. Retrieved on 2007-01-18.
- ^ Barcelona / Plan Barcelona
[edit] External links
- Official website (English)
- Barcelona Airport (English)
- Plan Barcelona official website (Spanish)
