Aena will put out to tender the expansion project for the Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández airport in the last quarter of this year and, subsequently, it will put out to tender the project for the Valencia airport, as announced by the airport manager after the meeting held by its directors and the councilors of the Valencian government Salomé Pradas and Nuria Montes.
According to Aena, both actions will have “the maximum environmental guarantees” and will be discussed in the mandatory consultation process with the airlines, according to the procedure established by law in 2014, in which the National Commission of Markets and Competition and the regulator. Once this procedure is completed, both projects will be reflected in Aena's investment plan, the DORA (Airport Regulation Document) 2027-2031.
This has been communicated by the president and CEO of Aena, Maurici Lucena, the vice president, Javier Marín, and the general director of Airports, Elena Mayoral, to the ministers of Environment, Water, Infrastructure and Territory, Salomé Pradas, and of Innovation , Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Nuria Montes, in a meeting that the parties have valued very differently.
The Aena delegation has explained to the councilors that the airport infrastructure planning process is based on traffic forecasts prepared with technical criteria and forecasts from international organizations and, as a result of this process, it has been concluded that investment priorities should be the expansions of the terminals at the Alicante-Elche and Valencia airports, which will increase their capacity to cover future demand.
Aena affirms that it “plans its actions sufficiently in advance based on the evolution of traffic, calculated by the technicians” of the airport manager, and denies that any of the infrastructure in the region “has been saturated at any time.”
However, the Consell, in addition to attributing Aena's decision to its "demand pressure", which has been "key" to start the commitment to accelerate the deadlines for airport expansion, has expressed its disagreement with the absence of deadlines or amount of investments or the volume of operations.
For Councilor Pradas, Aena has offered only “timid advances” regarding the terminals, so the Consell will continue to demand the second runway in Alicante, whose need, she assures, “is supported by technical and economic reports” and the cameras also demand trade.
For her part, Minister Montes has stated that "the investment of 400 million in one of Aena's airports in Brazil" is just as necessary as that of the Valencian airports, which operate "practically at the limit of their capacity."
Montes has demanded that “the tourism, investment and society needs” provided by these infrastructures and “the investment that Valencians deserve” be taken into account.
The Aena proposals discussed this Thursday at the institutional meeting were already advanced in the region's Airport Coordination Committee held on April 9, in which representatives of the government of the Generalitat Valenciana and the business associations of the region participated. .
The next meeting is scheduled for the month of June, in which the functional design of the Alicante airport and the studies for the expansion of Manises will be addressed. The Consell has requested that a feasibility and economic progression study be presented for the second runway in Alicante.
