The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has chosen Madrid as the venue for its largest operations center in the world. IATA will manage from the Spanish capital the services it provides to its members, a total of 280 airline companies from 110 countries, as announced by the media on January 11.

On the same day, Íñigo de la Serna, Minister of Public Works, welcomed this choice which represents a step forward for this operations center in Madrid. Until now, this center has managed the European region and will now also be responsible for North America, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and part of Asia.

According to a press release by the Ministry of Public Works, the operations managed by the Spanish center in its new role will represent 83% of the world's traffic. These operations will have a volume of around 150 billion dollars (125.55 billion euros) in corresponding ticket sales.

330 new employees
330 new employees from 60 nationalities will be joining the new global operations headquarters, in addition to the current workforce of 160. Their responsibilities will include managing airline tickets and relations with 50,000 travel and freight agents for America, Europe, Africa, the Near East and Central Asia.

According to De la Serna: “The IATA decision to choose Madrid for its headquarters is excellent news for Spain. It clearly responds to the significant investment made by our country and its leadership in the tourism sector after closing 2017 with 82 million tourists, thus positioning itself as the second-most popular tourism destination worldwide”.

The minister also highlighted the importance of Spanish airports worldwide: “Today, we learned that the airports that make up the AENA network closed 2017 with a record 249.2 million passengers, surpassing the passenger traffic figure posted last year by 8.2%”.