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Aena, the Spanish airport management company, has agreed to introduce a series of measures to promote and expand smaller airports across the country, which could incentivise more airlines to fly to and from the Region of Murcia International Airport.

 

The Board of Directors this week approved an incentive package for the 32 airports and heliports that had fewer than 3 million passengers in 2023.

 

Specifically, the small airports affected are: Asturias, Girona-Costa Brava, La Palma, A Coruña, Seve Ballesteros-Santander, Vigo, Reus, Federico García Lorca Granada-Jaén, Jerez, Aeropuerto Internacional de la Región de Murcia, Almería, Zaragoza, Melilla, San Sebastián, Vitoria, El Hierro, Valladolid, Pamplona, La Gomera, Ceuta, Badajoz, León, Algeciras, Salamanca, Logroño-Agoncillo, Son Bonet, Sabadell, Córdoba, Burgos, Albacete, Madrid-Cuatro Vientos and Huesca-Pyrenees.

 

 

Under the new rules, airlines will be exempt from paying the per-passenger fee at these airports for all travellers over and above those that passed through the airport in 2023. For Murcia’s Corvera airport, the total passenger number for 2023 was 877,796, so from the 877,797th passenger onwards, airlines will not have to pay passenger fees.

 

This exemption will be in place for the next three years, so until the end of 2026.

 

In addition, until March 2027, incentives are being extended for any airline that opens new routes to destinations in airports with more than 3 million passengers, and growth is stimulated compared to the previous equivalent season on routes with Asia.

 

The airlines will also benefit, in terms of tariffs, from the 45-million-euro subsidy from the Government of Spain to cover part of the expenses they assumed to adapt the infrastructure to the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

 

Likewise, the incentives that have been applied to La Palma Airport since the volcano eruption of 2021 remain in force.

 

Airlines will also benefit from bonuses for operating during the low season at the seasonal airports of the Balearic Islands and the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, on off-peak days at the airports of the Canary Islands and for passengers who make an onward connection.

 

These incentives will be applied to the rates approved for 2024, which will be higher than they were last year but still lower than they were in 2019, pre-pandemic. The rates are going up from 3.5% to 4.09%, that is, an update of 40 cents per passenger on average.

 

Sources from Ryanair hinted that if Aena raised its rates this year, they would limit planned investment in the country, including the opening of five new airbases, one of which could be in the Region of Murcia.

 

Between 2015 and 2023, Aena rates have nominally decreased by 11%. In that period, inflation has been 21%, which means that in real terms these rates have actually fallen by 32% in the period 2015-2023.

 

 

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