ARCHIVED - Corvera airport lost 97 per cent of traffic in January; is it closing down readers ask

The cancellation of Ryanair flights several months ahead is once again raising questions

In the last few days there has been a further rash of questions asked on social media about the future of Corvera airport and whether it is closing down, prompted by a series of further flight cancellations by Ryanair.

During January the airport handled just 1,658 passengers, a loss of 97.5 percent when compared to January 2020, just before the coronavirus pandemic broke, making it the second worst-performing airport in all of Spain during January, second only to Girona, Costa Brava, which lost 97.6 percent compared to last year and only handled 863 passengers.

The whole of the Aena-run network lost 83.4 per cent of its passengers, handling just 2.8 million passengers and the majority of the top ten airports in Spain lost more than 80 per cent of their traffic.
Even Alicante only handled 77,325 passengers, a drop of 89.6 per cent when compared to last January.
Although airports across Spain are being very badly affected by the coronavirus flight and movement restrictions, the situation is particularly bad at Corvera due to the fact that the airport depends so heavily on traffic from the United Kingdom, and of course at the moment, only those returning to Spain as official residents are allowed to leave the UK.

This has left Corvera processing only small private and cargo flights and flights to the Canary Islands through Air Binter.

And although flights are scheduled to resume from mid- March via Easyjet between Gatwick and Bristol and from Belgium via Tui at the end of March, no further additions to the flights schedule are expected until May when Ryanair had hoped to resume Manchester, Glasgow and Bournemouth flights.

Although the airline has been forward-selling routes from Murcia-Corvera, some of the flights months ahead have been cancelled recently, sparking off queries about whether the airport was set to close altogether; certainly the flights scheduled to Corvera are a little sparse at the moment, although flights are also being cancelled to Alicante and other airports as the airline adjusts its scheduling in line with the current evolution of the pandemic and the probability of whether restrictions will be relaxed sufficiently for a viable flights schedule to resume.

Aena renegotiating terms with the Murcian government
Aena has maintained throughout the pandemic that it has no intention of closing the airport and maintains that the airport is “operational”.

AENA was partially privatized not long before the pandemic, and 51 percent of its share capital belongs to the Spanish State, so although it has to be commercially viable to satisfy its shareholders, it also has to protect the general interest of Spanish taxpayers.

The Murcian regional government awarded the contract to manage Corvera airport two years ago, closing San Javier airport in favour of Corvera, and during the first year the airport handled just over a 1 million passengers, a figure lower than had been achieved at San Javier, but a level at which the company felt that the installations were viable and a base upon which to build for the future.

However, the pandemic totally stalled all forward progress and by March last year the airport was losing passengers and starting to haemorrhage money due to the pandemic.

By the middle of the year it requested a re-negotiation of its contract with the regional government and just before Christmas a payment of 2.6 million euros was authorised to handle the short-term situation, and compensate the operator for losses between the period of March and July last year, the “adjustment” negotiated maintaining the 25 year contract for operating the airport, but adjusting the “payment by passenger” system to better able the company to maintain the installations open in the short-term, but compensating the regional government in the long-term for that financial adjustment now.

The national government has also been forced to support Iberia and Vueling, as have governments all over the world, due to the scale of losses sustained.

There are still discussions underway about the future terms for operating the airport, but for the moment, the airport is operational and continues to offer the Canary Islands service, with the expectation that other flights will resume once travel restrictions from the countries of origin, are lifted.

Staff laid off and dispute with services concessionaries
This situation leaves staff working at the airport furloughed, with a minimal sketal staff in place to handle the few flights operating from the airport. Most staff working for the airlines are furloughed and the businesses who have taken on sales and beverages units in the airports operated by Aena are immersed in a nationwide dispute over the rents currently paid for their sales units.

12,000 people work in these units at the airports and are facing a fall of 90% in their turnover due to the collapse in the travel sector. Negotiations are underway with the union representing airport concessionary workers, but the union maintains that the concessionaries cannot accept the 50 percent reduction proposed, when their turnover in the last year has fallen by 90 percent. Negotiations continue, but these businesses face an uncertain future if the travel sector doesn´t open up soon as every month that passes with such low passenger numbers, increases their indebtedness.

Moving forward
The regional tourism board is optimistic that flights will resume from Corvera airport once the pandemic has eased, and maintains that it is working to secure internal routes such as conncections with Asturias, Barcelona, Bilbao and Santander as well as negotiating to expand international routes for the future.

At the moment resumption of the main part of its operations; flights with the UK, is dependent on the relaxation of rules imposed by the UK and Spanish Governments and the possibility that some sort of “Covid passport” be agreed within the next few months.

For the remainder of February and first half of March, no UK connections are currently scheduled.

The airport hasn´t closed and isn´t planning to close; there are simply virtually no flights scheduled at the moment.