ARCHIVED - President Valcarcel visits Corvera airport and tourism comes under fire

The Passenger Terminal and Control Tower are structurally complete

2010-10-27

The President of the Murcia Region, Ramon Luis Valcarcel,  has today visited the works taking place at Corvera airport where he announced that the structures of the air control tower and the passenger terminal, "are now finished."

He was accompanied by the Consejero of Public works , Jose Ballesta, who said that, " the completion of the two main structures of the murcian aerodrome, from which the traffic will be operated, are a major advance in the structure of this project, and it is predicted that the construction will be concluded at the end of 2011 or beginning of 2012."

He continued by saying, " in spite of having to fight against the elements, works are moving ahead at a good speed."

To push the project forward, there are now 533 workers, from more than 50 businesses working day and night to complete the infrastructure, which covers a total of 306 hectares, equivalent to 306 football pitches.

Once the total external structures are complete, there is still a vast amount of work to be done fitting all the installations. In the 27,000 square metre passenger terminal there is the air conditioning, soundproofing, security systems, cabling, water and power supplies to be installed into the four gates which will be capable of processing 3200 passengers an hour, if the 3 million visitors arrive as hoped.

The President said that all the works were now proceeding as scheduled and that the final part of the works being undertaken by the government, the access from the west, would be completed by the end of 2010.

He also reiterated the governments contribution of 36 million euros to this project for the access roads and services provided ,and said that AENA, who operate the airports, have been asked to give maximum priority to the bureaucratic procedures which will be required to ensure that the airport is able to open as quickly as possible once it is physically completed.

On the 20^th December he will be signing an agreement with Jose Blanco, Minister for development reference the infrastructure projects which the Region so badly wants to move forward and complete, amongst them the preliminary studies for the High speed train line between Cartagena and Murcia, together with access link, which will add the airport into the national railways network

Yesterday articles appeared criticizing the cessation of 7 routes next Monday by the Ryanair airline. The pieces blamed the company for its "aggression" and one paper stated that the regional tourism officials said that they had no knowledge that the routes would be stopping as nobody had given them official confirmation

Today, however, Marina Garcia Vidal, Director General of tourism, said that she was concerned at the cancellation of the routes and would do everything possible to minimize the damages. She said that she would be contacting other airlines to try and recuperate some of the routes and minimize the loss of passengers.

She said that Ryanair had not wanted to negotiate or accept a tourism promotion campaign, " They came with an imperious proposition, demanding 12 euros per passenger. Take it or leave it they said. They wanted to impose their conditions. They knew that the regional government couldnt subsidise airlines because this contravenes European regulations. Ryanair has a very aggressive manner, its how they work."

 We all know that.

 Ryanair is the airline everyone loves to hate, but the truth is, as humans, were all only interested in whats good  for ourselves. As airline users, we only care that someone is flying to where we want to go to, it doesnt really matter who it is, and of course, we all want it as cheaply as possible.

And we want it now.

Were only human after all.

Come what may, the fact remains that even without the cancellation of these flights, traffic through San Javier has already reduced by 35% in the last 2 years, down from just under 2 million in 2007, to 1.3 million this year.

The downturn in construction has eliminated the planeloads of potential buyers who would carry out inspection visit after inspection visit, and talk to the owners of small hotels and they say that their occupancy was nearly always people looking at the area with a view to buy, rather than those taking a holiday.

It would be interesting to work out exactly how much money has come into the region via those buying property  and how much their purchase has actually generated.

Its always amusing to see ignorant press copy which tries to say that the foreigners who buy second property in this country contribute nothing to the Spanish system, just because people dont pay their income tax in this country.

Add up how much each one has spent on purchasing a property, furnishing it, all the money spent on flights, car hire, buying a car, insuring and taxing it, fuel maintenance, food, restaurants, picking up visitors, all the money the visitors spend , days out etc etc etc and thats how much each of these foreigners has contributed to the local murcian economy.

Many tens of thousands of euros I think youll find.

The big worry of course, is how 2 airports will function side by side and if theres actually enough passenger traffic to go around.

Murcia will be happy with 1.5 million tourists, but all the talk during this construction of Corvera is of 3 million tourists, but where are they going to come from?

Yes of course, IF this Paramount project goes ahead it will undoubtedly attract more tourists.

But IF that happens itll be at least 3 years before theres anything remotely like a theme park functioning, and unless the economy recovers significantly, which is highly unlikely, there certainly wont be a big upturn in the housing market.

AENA, who operates the airports, wants to increase its charges by around 65 cents per passenger next year, whilst the private operators of Corvera have said their charges will be lower to attract the airlines into Corvera, but at the end of the day, not many of us will really register whether a seat is 65 cents more or not, all that matters is that the airlines keep flying.

Yes, Ryanair are aggressive.

Yes, theyre demanding.

But 700,000 passengers a year is probably half of San Javiers annual traffic and although the Director General believes that those who want to come to this region will find other means, perhaps shes forgetting that Alicante wants her passengers, as do the Italians, the Portugese and the Moroccans.

And were fickle and selfish, well go wherever we get the best deal, and so will our tourism revenue.

Its fantastic news that Corvera is coming on so well. Lets just shes got some enthusiastic promotion lined up to attract the tourists to use it.

Or 3 years down the line well have a private company with a 200 million euro loan they cant afford and no traffic to finance their borrowing, just like the nations paytoll motorways system.