Daniel Oduber Quirós International Airport (LIR), which serves Liberia, in the province of Guanacaste, Costa Rica, announced the beginning of the region’s high season, which runs from November 2022 to April 2023.
The announcement refers to the increase in frequencies this season with flights to Canada, the United States and Europe. VINCI Airports, the consortium that manages the airport, estimates that the coming season will have record passenger traffic.
The airport received 494 397 passengers between January and September 2022, being an increase of 7.5% compared to the same period in 2019 and 91.8% against 2021, according to the Costa Rican Tourism Institute (ITC).
“We are driving positive mobility for VINCI Airports in Costa Rica. With the announcement of increased frequencies and the start of the high season we see that the route development strategy has paid off well. We are very excited about the positioning of Guanacaste as a tourist destination,” said Cesar Jaramillo, general manager of Guanacaste Airport.
Most of the new frequencies will operate from the second half of November, which coincides with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, celebrated this year on Thursday, November 24.
International Market
According to data obtained by Aviacionline through Cirium, between November and April, 6,159 international flights were scheduled, providing an offer of more than 1,058,275 seats, being an increase of 9% of operations and seats compared to the same period of the 2021/22 season. But it even represents a 30% growth versus the 2019/20 season.
From the United States it will feature flights from Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines, Sun Country and United Airlines to 16 destinations.
The United States is Costa Rica’s main source of tourists, and in 2022 it recovered 98% of air revenues by receiving 967,756 tourists.
Its second market is Canada, receiving 113,554 tourists by air this year. During this season, Air Canada, Air Transat, Sunwing and Westjet will connect three Canadian destinations with Guanacaste.
Finally, there will be flights from Europe by Edelweiss Air, KLM and TUI Airways. From the Old Continent they receive more than 300,000 tourists annually, with France, Spain, United Kingdom and Germany as their main issuing markets.
This season Copa Airlines, which before the pandemic operated two weekly flights from Panama (PTY), will not be present.
Domestic Market
SANSA is Costa Rica’s main airline, with a fleet of nine 9-12 passenger Cessna C208B Grand Caravans.
The company currently connects Liberia and San José/Alajuela (SJO), operating up to seven daily flights with a flight time of 50 minutes. Its schedules allow connections to other destinations in the Costa Rican capital’s airport.
It also connects Liberia with Nosara (NOB) and Tambor (TMU) with a daily flight, on the coasts of the Nicoya Peninsula.
