Is it Madrid the only big capital city in Europe that does not have a second airport?
Juan Marcos Rodriguez Diaz
Head of Urban Planning & Landscape | Associate at B&P Madrid, AECOM
Bloomberg published today Europe’s Busiest Airports: Spanish capital Madrid posted the second-fastest growth
Spanish Airports hit 264 millions of passengers in 2018. This historical record seems to support the announcement last year of a second airport development in the capital of Spain. A new commercial airport is aiming to host low-cost airlines from Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport by 2023, transformation of an existing airfield, 30 kilometers southeast from Madrid’s center. If approved, the new airport could open by 2023 and receive around 300,000 commercial passengers in its first operational year (predicted to receive 55,000 flights a year and seven million passengers at the following 10 years). Private developer says the airport will bring about €1.8 billion profit in the upcoming 25 years and is expected to create 5,600 direct jobs and 13,300 indirect jobs by 2033. The industrial zone at the terminal is designed to employ another 32,000 people.
Nowadays, when most European metropolises find their planning options around their airports highly limited, AENA (Spanish airport authority) announced in April 2018 the largest real estate development plan in Spain, which will involve a combined public-private investment of €3 billion on a large reserve of 257 ha (about 1,5 million m2 GFA) next to the terminal and runaways. The development of this last major land reserve inside the metropolitan area might became a unique opportunity to upgrade the position of Madrid at the European network of Aerotropolis.
However there would be issues on how to operate an airport system, especially since networked airports are typically managed by single companies in big cities of Europe such as Aéroports de Paris, Aeroporti di Roma, Berliner Flugh?fen or London BAA/Luton:
Is it possible to think about a potential Airport Corridor across Madrid region that would foster and diversify economy?
How the current Real Estate Plan of Barajas would be affected by the construction of another –privately managed- airport?
Do you know some other similar experiences of cities with an airport system run by different operators?
More information:
Service Desk Team Lead at bet365
5 年Low-cost airlines taken from Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas? it may get empty. I thought Terminal 4 was the answer.
Operations Director, National Governments, Western Europe at AECOM
5 年Nice article, it will be interesting to watch this story develop!