Vueling cancels three routes from Alicante-Elche airport

With more than 14.7 million seats, Alicante-Elche Airport is looking forward to a very promising summer. Most airlines are adding new destinations and increasing frequencies, including Ryanair, which flies to Austria and Poland, and EasyJet, which flies to Athens and Naples.

Vueling, another airline with the highest passenger volume, keeps a number of seats comparable to the campaign from last summer, but this time it does not fly to the three locations it served from Alicante-Elche airport.

Rome, Zurich, and Santiago de Compostela are the three routes that the Barcelona-based airline has cancelled. Alicante-Elche airport will still have links to these cities, although with different airlines, even though Vueling has cancelled these routes.

Ryanair and Wizz Air will begin operating this route from March 30th at Rome-Fiumicino Airport, while EasyJet and Swiss International Airlines will operate it from Zurich. The two airlines responsible for service on this route will be Ryanair and Alba Star on the Santiago side.

For both airports, Vueling loses two international routes where it had a significant passenger share. 59,158, or 27.5%, of the 214,614 passengers who flew to Alicante from Rome-Fiumcino Airport in 2024 did so with Vueling. It flew 323 planes in all.

Zurich Airport, on the Swiss side, handled 169,977 passengers. Of these, 39,822 passengers, or 23.4%, took flights with Vueling. The airline battled with Swiss Air, which runs the route year-round, and EasyJet, which launched the service last summer, on a total of 246 flights to the Swiss city.

Travelling to these nations with Vueling is made more difficult by the airline’s continued practice of connecting via stopovers in Barcelona, where it has its headquarters. Wizz Air offers four connections to Rome, whilst Ryanair offers five weekly flights between the two cities. Beginning in mid-April, EasyJet will run four weekly flights on this route from the Zurich side. With everyday flights, Swiss will follow suit.