Faro airport has an additional nine routes that will be fully operational through the summer season.
Many of the routes connect France to the Algarve, with Paris (Charles de Gaulle), Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Nantes and Marseille now linked to the region with 129% more seat availability this year.
New routes to Vienna, to Doncaster and to Nuremberg add to the expansion but France is the key to the Algarve's expected record summer for tourist numbers.
During today's presentation of the new routes for summer 2016, the airport's director, Alberto Mota Borges noted that the estimated increase of passengers is due also to the strengthening of the charter flights (up 29%) as well as scheduled services (up 19%) which are increasing in frequency on several routes.
"We have record numbers. There is an increase in supply, which had already been felt last year, but there have been reductions in flights to other destinations and in the Algarve we have a key asset - security," said Borges, tempting fate.
Alberto Mota Borges admits that 2016 is a "particularly challenging year" as the new terminal building has not been finished, nor is it scheduled to be until the Spring of 2017, but he assures travellers that during the summer, the operation "will run smoothly," since all the airport systems including 'check-in', security check, boarding gates etc will have more resources as demand rises.
According to Hélder Lemos, head of the airport's marketing department, although there has been growth in bookings caused by the problems in North Africa, even before this there were indications that year 2016 would be better than 2015.
The new routes and increased weekly flights during the summer represent an increase of 1.2 million available seats, 20% up compared to the summer season last year with 500 weekly departures. Last year Faro airport handled 6.4 million passengers.
