San Javier airport will close when Corvera opens

Aena agrees to halt civil aviation traffic at San Javier after the Corvera contract is re-awarded

One of the many obstacles lying in the path of the intention to open the new Region of Murcia International Airport in Corvera has for a long time been the question of what to do with the existing airport at San Javier, but reports published in the press over the weekend suggest that this issue at least may at last have been resolved.

According to the La Verdad two of the ministers in the regional government, Francisco Bernabé and Francisco Martínez Asensio, had a meeting in Madrid on Friday with José Manuel Vargas, the managing director of Aena, at which it was agreed that civil aviation flights at San Javier will end after the new management contract at Corvera is awarded. Exactly how long after is not yet certain – the government proposed six months but Aena has not committed to a fixed timescale – but the agreement was that San Javier will close.

What this means, if the reports are confirmed, is that any company bidding for the new Corvera management contract will not have to worry about facing competition from San Javier.

Sr Vargas is also reported to have confirmed that Aena will be one of the bidders for the contract.

Assuming that the reports in the press are true the news means that one of the headaches for the regional government regarding Corvera has been removed, and attention can now focus on finalizing the terms of the tender process for the new contract, officially terminating the existing contract with Aeromur and attempting to reach agreements with the former concessionaire on outstanding litigation.

It is also extremely likely that some kind of reaction to the news will be forthcoming from the employees at San Javier, both those on the payroll of Aena and those whose jobs are with the ancillary service companies on the premises, and it’s not hard to foresee that they are hardly likely to welcome the latest development given their public opposition to the plans on previous occasions.

It is now of crucial importance for the government to ensure that existing air traffic using San Javier, where despite falling passenger numbers over the last six years there were still over a million users in 2014, is transferred to Corvera rather than being diverted by airlines to Alicante-Elche or simply cancelled.

There could be a suspicion that the bidding process for the new contract may be somehow tailored to suit the demands of Aena, but the government line is that no such possibility exists. In their determination to avoid the contract being “fixed” in any way they will no doubt be aided by Aermour, who will instigate legal proceedings if the new management contract is significantly different from the old one and offers more favourable terms than their own former contract(now rescinded).

However, there is still a long way to go before Corvera airport opens, and some readers will recall a similar promise being made four years ago in March 2011 when former regional President Ramón Luis Valcárcel revealed that he had reached a similar agreement with the socialist government in power at the time, although the agreement failed to come to fruition when the central government changed from PSOE to PP in the 2011 elections.