The commission on the extension of the Barcelona airport of Foment del Treball already has nine different proposals that try to respond to the need to improve the intercontinental connectivity of Catalonia. Among them, the ones to extend the third track (the one by the sea) 350 meters towards La Ricarda stand out, the one to share the lengthening of it to the east and west to safeguard the lagoons of the Natura 2000 network or the one to build a track over the sea , all of them advanced by La Vanguardia. Also the initial project of Aena, which proposed adding 500 meters to the third runway so that large planes that fly to the west coast of the United States or to the Far East can take off without difficulties from El Prat.
But there are others that the different speakers have presented to the commission and that it analyzes to present its final conclusions between June and July, as explained on Thursday by the president of the employers' association, Josep Sánchez Llibre.
Neither Sánchez Llibre nor the president of the Commission, Lluís Moreno, have detailed what are the nine proposals that, so far, the experts have contributed - there could be more because the commission will end in June. "The main ones have already been published in the press," Moreno stated.
The other proposals consist of building a new airport in the area surrounding Vilafranca del Penedès, as this newspaper has been able to verify, in promoting Girona as a node for El Prat for short-haul point-to-point flights or in operating the current runways both for takeoffs and landings, eliminating the segregated runway system.
All of them have advantages and disadvantages. The first is considered very difficult to execute. Building a new airport entails a billion-dollar investment and impacting a natural space that is currently not affected. Also a very long construction time. In the case of designating the Girona airport as a kind of "satellite" of El Prat, the waiting time and the distance that eventual passengers would need to reach Barcelona stand out, no matter how much the high-speed rail connections are improved. The mixed track system implies greater noise pollution on neighboring towns. All of them, however, would relieve El Prat congestion and provide the necessary infrastructure to promote long-haul flights.
"Nothing has been decided yet," Sánchez Llibre and Moreno have stressed. The Foment commission, made up of 42 specialists from various fields – aeronautical engineering, urban planning, the environment or economics – has a few months of work ahead of them and wants to be “very prudent” with the work they provide. They will present it to the Government of the Generalitat and to the different actors involved in the future of the airport with the aim of "generating consensus" and making the improvement of the airport a reality.
Sánchez Llibre, Lluís Moreno, Alícia Casart, director of Infrastructures of the Chamber of Commerce, Mar Alarcón, CEO of Social Car, and Òscar Oliver, expert consultant in aeronautical transport, have appeared this Thursday to highlight that Catalonia needs to strengthen its air connections with the world and that it must be done “in the most sustainable way possible”. The debate on the airport has gained momentum after the budget agreement between the ERC and the PSC and La Vanguardia has published the option of building a new runway over the sea.
This last proposal is promoted by the engineer Joaquim Coello, who is part of the Foment airport commission, or by the former Minister of the Generalitat Andreu Mas-Colell. However, from the employers they have clarified that it is a private initiative unrelated to their commission on the airport. Although this option is also among the proposals presented on it.
"The improvement of the airport must be a reality in 2023", insisted Sánchez Llibre. The technical commission between the Generalitat and the central government will probably be activated around September.
