Iberia Boosts Flights to Santiago

Spanish national carrier Iberia has announced it will offer an expanded schedule of flights between its Madrid Barajas base and Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport in the Chilean capital Santiago over the next five weeks. The airline confirms that up until February 25, 2013 it will introduce a further two weekly rotations on the route, first launched in 1961, bringing weekly schedules to nine a week.

Across this period Iberia says it will offer approximately 25,500 additional seats on the route, an increase of nearly eleven per cent. According to the carrier, despite network cuts in its long-haul market this expansion shows its commitment to the Chilean market. “These two new flights strengthen Iberia’s commitment to Chile, which has become one of the company’s network markets to grow the most in the past two years,” said Ángel Valdemoros, International Sales Manager, Iberia.

The two additional rotations will introduce a second daily flight every Monday and Friday and will facilitate further connection opportunities to Latin America from destinations across Europe and the Middle East via its Madrid hub. The additional flights will be operated by an Airbus A340-300 and will depart Madrid at 12:00, arriving in Santiago at 21:25. The return service operates at 22:55 from Santiago, arriving back in Madrid at 15:55 the following day. This schedule complements the existing daily 22:25 departures from Madrid and 13:20 departure from Santiago.

Iberia carried nearly 200,000 passengers on its flights between the Spanish and the Chilean capitals in 2012. The most important local and European O&D markets for the service were, according to the Spanish carrier, London, Paris, Rome and Milan in Europe, as well as Bilbao, Valencia, Seville and Malaga in Spain.

In the table below we highlight the main O&D markets that utilised flights between Madrid and Santiago for the 12 months ending September 2012, a route also served on a daily basis by LAN Airlines using an A340-300. In this period over 210,000 bi-directional passengers began or ended their journeys at an airport other than Madrid. The large amount of connecting traffic is due to the fact that alongside Madrid, Paris is the only other European destination to be linked to Santiago by a non-stop air service, through a daily Air France flight.