FINAL APPROVAL FOR CORVERA AIRPORT

President of Murcia, Ramón Luis Valcárcel has said that the airport will finally open its doors within a few weeks

Members of the Inter Ministerial Defence and Development Committee (Cidefo) met last week to give final approval to the air corridor into the new Corvera airport

The meeting was held in Madrid and attended by representatives of AENA, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the National Air Safety Agency (EASA) and the Spanish Air Force.

The new air corridor into Corvera has already received approval from Cidefo so the airport file will now be transferred to the European Commission for publication in the Official Gazette within six weeks.

Operation of the new Duty Free Shop has been awarded to the company ‘World Duty Free Group Spain’, formerly Aldeasa. The company is controlled by the Benetton family who already operate shops at Barcelona-El Prat and seven other AENA airports, Palma de Mallorca, Ibiza, Menorca, Valencia, Gerona-Costa Brava, Alicante and Reus.

Following on from the meeting, the President of Murcia, Ramón Luis Valcárcel has said that the airport will finally open its doors within a few weeks and that it will attract at least 2 million passengers.

The figure given - way in excess of the busiest ever year for arrivals at San Javier Airport - will be achieved as soon as Spain recovers from the economic crisis, he said.

In justifying the reason for the new airport Valcarcel said that the priority at San Javier Airport will always be with military operations, training and flights and as such the availability of slots during the working day would always be restricted.

Valcarcel went on to say how operations at San Javier would always be restricted due to the airport having to reconcile Military and Civilian operations.

With San Javier being under the control of the General Air Academy (AGA), which trains military pilots, the priority is given over to Military operations.