AIR TRAFFIC OF PASSENGERS, TOURISM AND NETWORK AIRPORT IN SPAIN TO FINAL OF THE XX CENTURY. SOME CONSIDERATIONS

Abstract

      The air traffic of passengers has known a spectacular increase in Spain during the last thirty years; it passes from 26,8 millions to 116,3. Equally it has modified their composition substantially. This way, the interior travellers in 1970 were 46,26 % while in the last year of reference they fall to 40,88%. On the other hand the proportion of those that used regular flights, has evolved from 59,80 % to 69,32%, between those two dates respectively. Everything confirms it. Apart from their remarkable ascent, this confirms a deep evolution toward their biggest maturity. The concentration of the traffic of passengers in a reduced number of airports has not changed. The 16th bigger airports added in the first years seventy 96,69 % of the total, as long as in 1998 that figure was almost similar, 93,94%. However, certain alterations are noticed in the hierarchy of the main Spanish airports in that time; at the same time that the lack of correspondence is accentuated in the hierarchy: some few ones, the first ones, add the biggest movements, in front of other many that register very weak traffics. The causes are analysed that have originated the most significant changes. It is also approached the study of the structure and the operation of the Spanish network of airports in these final years of the XX century, checking which their relationship is with the Spanish urban system.