Almeria city has managed to lure the Germans back by offering Air Berlin some lucrative slots at the airport. Flights to Germany will start twice weekly next year, I forget to which city but I think it was Berlin with an option to Dusseldorf if all goes well. This will fit in nicely with the Eastern European angle of the local chamber of commerce.
Vueling, which had been approached with the offer of covering three national flights a week to Almeria, recoiled in horror at the mere thought (I’m paraphrasing here, but you get the idea).
Sharp eyed fliers from Almeria will note that Andalus Air, the Andalucian airline which is ah hem associated with the Junta, some say via blood relations, and which was supposed to be flying to Madrid, Barcelona and Seville from Almeria, flew once on the 1st of September 2009, picked up a [very] large cheque from the Junta for doing so and promptly cancelled the flights. It fired its ground staff at the airport in June 2010 (six month contract, anyone?), after a decent interval to make sure the cheque cleared. As I said at the time, I was rather suspicious about the fact that to cover the Almeria route they simply reduced capacity on one of their other lines and reassigned a plane twice a week to Almería.