More long-haul aircraft than ever at Barcelona airport

Barcelona airport is quite a unique case in Europe: its nearly 35M annual passengers make it one of Europe's top ten airports, yet it is visited by a relatively small number of wide-bodied aircraft. Or was it?

In reality the number of long-haul routes (and airlines flying wide-body aircraft) has been increasing at Barcelona airport., to the point that Emirates and Transaero have announced A380 flights from Dubai and Moscow respectively. Add to that the fact that some airlines respond to Barcelona's popularity as a tourist destination by adding capacity and flying larger aircraft during the summer months and the chances of seeing large aircraft at Barcelona airport increase are actually much larger than they used not long ago.

So I was curious to find out more about this topic: although staff at Barcelona airport were extremely helpful, hard data had to come from Aena's website (Aena is the public entity managing almost all Spanish airports) that is really a pain to use...and unbelievable enough there is no dedicated site for Barcelona airport. 

However, there is a very active planespotting community in Barcelona and this is how I found what I was looking for. They say an image is worth more than a thousand words, so I thought it would be a good idea to share this video by Aerotendencias that summarizes quite well the current activity by wide-body aircraft at Barcelona airport, it only covers the first half of 2013, so the summer months, when activity peaks, are not included, but it is a very good illustration nevertheless!