Towards the end of the Spanish airlines

BarcelonaIn Spain, airlines that have the A operating license -for commercial aircraft- issued by the State Agency for Aviation Safety fit into a one-page file. In 2019, when the last update to the list was published, there were twenty. Of these, however, there are those that are dedicated to charter flights or the transport of goods. If we center on those that have a considerable operation of domestic or international routes, it comes down to only nine names. And from this week, four of nine airlines hang from the umbrella of the IAG holding company. The purchase of Air Europa by Iberia for 500 million euros is an operation that has dragged on for more than a year, and closes by opening another debate: will there be enough competition in the Spanish market?

"A Spanish company is lost and this is not positive", Jaume Adrover explains, director of the consultancy of the aerial sector GPA. Apart from the companies that already depend on IAG, the State will have five passenger airlines with Spanish DNA: Volotea, which focuses on secondary European airports and has a large part of the network in France and Italy; Plus Ultra, which operates routes in South America; Air Nostrum, with domestic and inter-island flights that has a franchise agreement with Iberia, and Binter and Canaryfly, which connect the Canary Islands.

Javier Sánchez-Prieto -who has gone from managing Vueling's summer chaos to Iberia's mergers- assured this week in an interview with El Economista that the "synergies" he seeks with the purchase of Air Europa "are for development, not for cuts". However, if we display the routes used by the Hidalgo family company on the world map, the duplications are evident. "The big changes will be for Palma and Madrid", Pere Suau-Sánchez, a professor at the UOC and Cranfield University specialized in the aviation sector, recalls. Air Europa is based in Palma and supplied the routes between islands and the connections with the Peninsula. In fact, the Balearic Government has expressed its concern on several occasions about the consequences that the operation may have on the volume of current routes. Iberia's intention to compensate for the reduction in competition on domestic flights -and to avoid a wake-up call from the authorities- is to cede some of these connections to Volotea.

In the case of Barajas (the Madrid airport), the addition of Air Europa to the reign of IAG will strengthen Iberia's dominance on the routes to South America and somewhat removes the threat of the Air France-KLM alliance. "The Latin market is more protected for them and they want to try to fight face-to-face with European hubs”, Suau-Sánchez remarks. Even so, the final portrait of the new network will not be fully defined until another more urgent problem is solved: the reactivation of air transport, which, as the two experts point out, will arrive much earlier for the national market.

Restlessness in El Prat

With the integration of Air Europa into IAG, some voices have also diverted attention to the derivatives for El Prat airport. The infrastructure is still embracing the farewell of Norwegian, which announced last week the end of its long-haul operations and, therefore, of flights between Barcelona and the United States. However, Suau-Sánchez is optimistic and recalls that the departure of the Scandinavian company is also an opportunity for Level, the long-haul brand of IAG, to gain ground. "The panorama in El Prat could even become a little better, because domestic and European tourism will be reactivated before the business trips that Barajas nourishes are", Adrover adds.