The FINANCIAL -- Iberia will launch direct flights between Madrid and the Argentine city of Córdoba on October 1st of this year, becoming the first European airline to operate on this route.
The Spanish airline expects to carry nearly 70,000 passengers on the route during the first year of operation.
The company will fly on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, at a time that ensures good connections in Madrid to and from its other destinations in Spain and the rest of Europe.
“The opening of this route is expected to bring substantial benefits to Córdoba, Argentina’s second-largest city after the capital, Buenos Aires. It will facilitate business travel, tourism, and reuniting families with members on both sides of the Atlantic. Iberia cargo holds can carry goods between that region and Europe,” Iberia says.
The new route will also consolidate Iberia’s leadership in Argentina. The Spanish airline currently holds a 26% market share of air passenger transport between Europe and Argentina, and with the new Córdoba flight it expects this share to increase to some 30%.
The new flight will link the Central area of Argentina with Europe. Córdoba’s Airport will become the gateway of a very extensive area of 400 km around the Argentinian city, where about 10 million people live.
Argentina is Iberia’s largest growth area in 2010. In February the airline added three weekly return flights to Buenos Aires, for a total of 17 flights per week.
In terms of seat capacity, this amounts to a 16% increase, with more than 1,000 additional seats per week. The additional flights and the new Madrid - Córdoba route will raise the total number of passengers Iberia carries between Spain and Argentina each year to above 500,000.
Buenos Aires became Iberia’s first trasnatlantic destination in 1946, when the Spanish carrier became the first airline to fly from Europe to South America. Today it uses 342-seat Airbus A-340/600s on the route, with a recently redesigned Business Plus Class, featuring 220 cm of personal space for each passenger, and seats that unfold into completely horizontal beds.
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