ARCHIVED - Corvera airport attracts seven bidders for management contract

Aena is just one of those interested in the Region of Murcia International Airport

After a period of frantic activity during the early autumn, news regarding the unopened Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera has been relatively thin on the ground recently, but a report published in La Verdad this weekend provides an update on the efforts to appoint a new management company following the rescission of the contract with Aeromur last year. 

The article reports that the State-owned airport management company Aena is one of seven parties interested in taking over at Corvera, basing this information on the preliminary summary produced by Phasiphae Consultora Internacional and Garrigues Abogados, who are currently preparing the revised business plan prior to the management contract being put out to tender. This plan estimates that a total of between 2.5 and 3.5 million passengers will be using the airport at Corvera by the year 2025, a figure which has been reached on the assumption that the new facility will be able to take some traffic away from the nearby Costa Blanca airport of Alicante-Elche.

If achieved, this figure would represent approximately three times the amount of traffic currently using Murcia-San Javier airport, where annual totals have fallen from just over 2 million in 2007 to around 1.1 million this year. Over the same period, traffic at Alicante-Elche has grown steadily, and will this year top 10 million for the second time in a row.

The business plan containing this forecast is to be delivered to the regional government before the end of this month in preparation for the bidding process for the new contract, and it contains a selection of 20 airport management companies which could be suited to the contract at Corvera. Seven of these have confirmed that they intend to bid, according to regional government minister Francisco Bernabé, who also specified that five of the candidates are European, one is from Africa and the other is American. 

The favoured bid in one sense will be the one made by Aena, as this would make it easier to transfer activity from San Javier to Corvera and avoid the need for compensation to be paid to the company for the closure of the airport on the shore of the Mar Menor. Five of the seven potential bidders have made it a condition that San Javier should close, and if this does not happen, the projected passenger numbers at Corvera would be reduced by 1 million, according to the business plan.

As for the issue of how the regional government will recover the amount of 182 million euros which it supplied as a guarantee on a loan made to Aeromur, the business plan recommends the payment of a fixed annual tariff by the new concessionaire and a variable sum depending on the number of passengers using the new airport. 

The Murcia region continues to be serviced by the San Javier airport, which shares the runway facilities with the San Javier military Air Academy, and the region is well-connected to many more routes via neighbouring Alicante airport.

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