Vueling cancels flights to three destinations from Alicante-Elche airport

Alicante-Elche airport is approaching a more optimistic summer season with over 14.7 million seats. Most airlines are increasing frequencies and adding new destinations, such as Ryanair, with flights to Austria and Poland, or EasyJet, with its links to Athens and Naples.

Another major airline in terms of passenger transport is Vueling, which maintains a similar number of seats to last summer, but this time without three destinations it previously operated from Alicante-Elche airport.

Thus, the Barcelona-based airline has cancelled three routes it operated: Santiago de Compostela, Rome, and Zurich. Despite Vueling's cancellation of these routes, Alicante-Elche airport will continue to have connections to these cities with other airlines.

In the case of Rome-Fiumicino airport, this route will be operated from March 30 by Ryanair and Wizz Air, while Zurich will be served by EasyJet and Swiss International Airlines. For Santiago, Ryanair and Alba Star will be the two companies providing service on this route.

Vueling loses two international routes where it had a significant share of passengers for both airports. In 2024, Rome-Fiumicino airport had a transit of 214,614 passengers on the route with Alicante, of which 59,158, or 27.5%, travelled with Vueling. In total, it operated 323 aircraft.

For Switzerland, Zurich airport had a flow of 169,977 passengers. Of these, 23.4%, or about 39,822 passengers, flew with Vueling. The airline operated a total of 246 flights on this route to the Swiss city, where it competed against EasyJet, which opened the route last summer, and Swiss Air, which keeps it open year-round.

Vueling thus maintains the connection via stopovers in Barcelona, where it is headquartered, making travel to these countries with the airline more complicated. In the case of Rome, Ryanair maintains five weekly flights between the two cities, while Wizz Air has four links. For Zurich, EasyJet will operate four weekly flights on this route from mid-April. Swiss will do the same with daily flights.