ARCHIVED - Murcia government inches closer to opening Corvera airport

Completion of Corvera airport inventory brings airport opening a little closer

The new management contract at Corvera could be put out for tender early next year

The government of the Region of Murcia continues to make gradual progress towards its aim of putting the management contract for the new international airport in Corvera out for tender again by January of next year, and according to the regional press an important step forward has now been made with the completion of a full inventory of the facilities and installations.

The regional Spanish press have both run major pieces about the subject this week, but in reality there is very little to report that hasn´t already been written a hundred times before, other than the news that the contract to prepare a new business plan for the airport will be adjudicated “ in a few days’ time”.

The regional minister for infrastructure, Francisco Bernabé, hopes to have the final figures for the audit which has apparently now been completed, within the next few days, although La Verdad has already ventured the opinion that the book value of the airport is likely to have been estimated by external auditors at around 250 million euros in construction costs plus the equipment and facilities which have been installed by Aeromur, the consortium which was awarded the first management contract and is still in charge of maintaining Corvera. No specific total has yet been mentioned, but these are figures which have been fairly widely published in the past, being the approximate cost of construction.

The regional government still has to negotiate a final settlement with Aeromur, following the unilateral decision to rescind their contract which was made in late 2014.

Regional minister Francisco Bernabé is optimistic that an amicable agreement can be reached, but Aeromur have confirmed that they will be claiming at least 50 million euros to compensate them for direct investment in the project, plus the money which was spent on acquiring the land to build the airport and on certifying the facilities once they were complete. The land expropriations, again according to La Verdad, cost almost 20 million euros, of which 12 million have been paid.

The next step is to award the contract for a new up-to-date business plan to be compiled, based on current passenger numbers at the airports of San Javier and Alicante-Elche and the most recent data regarding air traffic. The projections based on these data will be used to determine the terms of the new management contract regarding the amounts to be paid to the government every year by the new concessionary. The contract for preparing the new business plan should be put out for tender within a “few days” and there are reported to be 3 companies waiting to bid.

Only when this business plan has been completed can the new management contract be put out to tender, and once it has been awarded the regional government will be able to address the issue of paying the rest of the 182-million-euro debt which arose from the guarantee issued on a bank loan to Aeromur. A quarter of the loan capital has so far been repaid but the rest remains outstanding, and the period over which it can be paid back will depend on the estimates made in the business plan.

Before the terms of the new contract are finalized, though, other issues also need to be addressed. One concerns the agreement with Aena to transfer commercial flights from San Javier to Corvera, and at the same time a solution needs to be found regarding the employees at San Javier who will find themselves out of work once the transition is made. Some of these are employed by Aena, and negotiations are under way to ensure that they will have the option of joining the staff at Corvera.

Of course, much of this is still up in the air, as although verbal agreement has been reached for Aena to close San Javier, the rapidly approaching general elections could change the whole playing field yet again. In 2011 it was agreed that San Javier should close just weeks before the PSOE lost the general election to the PP. This sparked off a whole set of delays as the new incoming national minister was presented with a 14 billion euro Aena debt, plus the challenge of partly privatising the national airport network and making the network profitable. Now, just weeks before the next election the regional president Pedro Sánchez maintains that he has gained the agreement of Prime Minister Rajoy that San Javier will close, although should the government change in the autumn or a coalition win the national vote, then it could be back to the starting blocks all over again with a new minister for transport faced with sorting out the “Corvera-San Javier “ situation. At the moment a date of December 20th is being mooted as the most likely date for the general election, which again could cause delays in resolving the situation in Murcia.

And of course, the question of who will want to take on the airport is still up in the air. Sr Bernabé has confirmed that there is no firm commitment to bid for the contract to operate the airport anywhere at the moment, although there are said to be interested parties “waiting in the wings”. However, La Opinión reports that interested parties want guarantees that San Javier will close before committing any funds to taking on the Corvera concession, the same old record which has been playing for the last 4 years, so this is certainly not “new news”.

So far in the first seven months of this year the traffic at San Javier has actually fallen from the same period last year: during July traffic was down – 0.4% against July 2014, and the accumulated total this year is down -1.6%, against a national average of a 5.3% increase in traffic. In total San Javier has processed 613,677 passengers in the first seven months of the year.

Neighbouring Alicante is picking up many Murcia passengers and during July alone handled 1.25 million passengers, more than Murcia will handle during the whole of 2015, and has already processed 5.9 million passengers so far this year, having increased by 3.6% against the first seven months of last year.

However, some business owners are concerned that Murcia has lost its Glasgow, Edinburgh and East Midlands summer flights with Jet2 for next year, all of which are now flying into Alicante instead and winter flights into Murcia are fairly sparse. Although the short-term effect is that holidaymakers from these areas wishing to travel to properties in Murcia will face increased travel time driving down from Alicante, the property sector will face the mental barrier that potential property owners may opt for areas in Alicante which are nearer to the airport rather than driving all the way down to Murcia when making a purchasing decision if there is a perception that it is “difficult” to get to Murcia out of season.

The opening of the Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera is certainly a little closer, with the completion of the inventory, but there are still plenty of hurdles to be overcome before it becomes a reality.
 

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