Aena Group Carried 36.6m Passengers in October, Up 3.1%

Aena Group airports handled 36,628,243 passengers in October 2026, a 3.1% increase on the same month last year. The Spanish operator also moved 308,773 aircraft movements, up 3.2%, and 135,706 tonnes of freight, down 9.6%. Ten months into 2026, group-wide traffic has reached 346,544,832 passengers, up 4% year over year.

For sellers of travel, that's roughly 1.1 million more people passing through Aena's network in a single month than in October 2025. Sustained 4% growth across the year suggests Spain's core air market is still expanding — but the detail underneath the headline is uneven.

Where the traffic actually grew

Aena's airports in Spain handled 30.5 million passengers in October. Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas led the network with 6,420,219 passengers, up 6.4% — the strongest performance among the major hubs and nearly double the group's average growth rate.

Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat followed with 5,259,722 passengers, but growth there was almost flat at 0.3%. Palma de Mallorca recorded 3,562,675, up 1.8%. Málaga-Costa del Sol reached 2,696,944, up 4.7%. Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández was the standout, posting 2,095,402 passengers, up 10.1%.

The takeaway: Madrid and the leisure-driven Mediterranean airports are pulling the growth, while Barcelona has stalled.

What about Aena's international assets?

The group's UK holdings performed well. London Luton Airport recorded 1,686,024 passengers, up 7.6%, and Leeds Bradford Airport handled 421,612, up 2.7%. Luton's growth rate was more than double the group average.

Aena Brasil was the weak spot. Its airports recorded 3,997,316 passengers, down 1% — the only decline across the group's reported markets. That's roughly 40,000 fewer passengers than a year earlier, and it pulls against the otherwise positive picture.

The pattern matters for distribution: strength is concentrating in Spain and the UK, while the Brazilian portfolio is contracting.

The freight caveat

Not everything in the release points up. Cargo tonnage fell 9.6% year over year to 135,706 tonnes — a drop of more than 14,000 tonnes in a single month. Passenger numbers and flight movements rose while freight slid, which suggests the bellies and freighters in Aena's network are carrying less cargo per operation than last October.

Aena didn't explain the decline, and the gap is worth watching for anyone tracking airport revenue mix, since cargo is a non-aeronautical income line operators lean on.

What comes next

With 346.5 million passengers already counted through October, Aena is on pace to beat its 2025 full-year total comfortably if the final two months hold. Whether Brazil stabilises and cargo recovers will shape how clean that year-end number looks.