The great summer getaway began on Friday, as the major cities of Spain emptied and their inhabitants headed en masse towards the coast.
The airport operator, Aena, will handle more than 5.1 million passengers between Friday, 27 July and Wednesday, 1 August, 32,865 flights programmed throughout their network .
The biggest day is 31 July, with more than 5243 flights scheduled, transferring 830,000 passengers .
As is to be expected Madrid-Barajas is the busiest of all, with 6312 flights during the six-day period and more than 1 million passengers expected to pass through the airport and Barcelona - El Prat isn't far behind with 906,000 passengers scheduled along with 5384 flights.
Around 3 million traffic journeys are expected to take place in the region of Murcia over the summer period, although this is down 1 million on the same time last year, as the traffic Department anticipate less traffic movements due to the economic crisis. This phenomena isn't restricted purely to Murcia, but is a national trend, with drivers thinking twice about making unnecessary journeys and cutting back on holidays and trips away.
Nationally the traffic Department are preparing for 80 million long-distance journeys to be undertaken by motorists throughout Spain over the summer period.
The weekend road traffic was heavy, with seven people killed nationwide in road accidents between 3 PM on Friday midnight on Sunday evening, fortunately none of them in Murcia, although we did have our fair share of general road accidents.
Fortunately, taxi drivers have voted to cancel their protest strike which had been scheduled for 1 August and would undoubtedly have caused misery for all those attempting to get to their holiday destinations. Good sense, and the promise of a lucrative day have overcome the desire to make an action of protest which would have achieved little other than to deprive drivers of good income and encourage the public to use the illegal drivers who are causing so much damage to those legally plying their trade, paying their legal costs, and driving for a living.
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