From Monday, Barcelona hosts the annual summit of the Airports Council International (ACI, by its acronym in English), a meeting in which more than 700 companies will participate and where 2,000 airports from 140 countries will be represented to face the situation and challenges of the sector. Aena is hosting this edition and its president, Maurici Lucena, has chosen the Catalan capital to host this meeting, the most relevant in the airport industry worldwide. A way, he says, to “recognize the international projection of Barcelona, ??its importance, its cosmopolitanism and also to strengthen Aena’s commitment to the city and its airport”, whose future he analyzes in conversation with La Vanguardia .
El Prat has not yet achieved pre-pandemic passenger figures, while other airports such as Palma or Malaga are already above and Barajas, although it is also still below, is getting closer. Because?
Barcelona, ??like Madrid, is at a level of approximately 97% compared to 2019, which was an absolute record year. In 2019, Madrid was the fourth airport with the most traffic in the EU and Barcelona the fifth, and in airports of this size the recovery is a little behind the rest of the world in relation to that of tourist airports, because they are more sophisticated airports, with a more varied composition of their traffic and covering a wider geography. The war in Ukraine, the late post-covid opening of China and the slower reactivation of international connections affects this type of airport. Having said that, when we compare Barcelona with airports of the same size in the rest of the world, we see that it is at the forefront of its recovery and, therefore, it is only a matter of a few months before it is completely normalized. I give Barcelona and Madrid for recovered.
During the last few months, several important decisions have been made that try to reduce air traffic. One is that of the Amsterdam airport, which is trying to cut its capacity and has confronted it with the airlines, and another is that of the French Government, which has banned short flights with an alternative by train. We are also in a climate emergency situation and, in Spain, in a severe drought. Doesn’t the proposal to expand the Prat conflict with this?
The decisions of France or Amsterdam are showy, but the truth is that air traffic worldwide will increase significantly for demographic and economic reasons. In the case of Barcelona airport, some of the most vehement positions against expansion actually defend the thesis of economic decline. This is a very dangerous thing because without economic growth it will be impossible to produce the gigantic investments that the world economy needs to decarbonize activity with new technologies. Moreover, economic decline is a profoundly regressive thesis. Having said that, the big challenge is how to reconcile the fact of flying more with the decarbonisation of air activity in the coming decades. For Barcelona and Catalonia, not expanding the airport means assuming that the competitiveness of the Catalan economy and its future growth will be seriously harmed. Big cities need long-range intercontinental flights, they need airports that allow it, and without that they cannot compete economically in the world.
Do you trust that the budget agreement between the ERC and the PSC in Catalonia will derail the negotiation on the future of El Prat?
There is a commitment to set up an institutional table between the Government of Spain and the Government of the Generalitat. It will be necessary to see how it develops, but without the support of the Government it is impossible for it to prosper. Without your support, the Barcelona airport expansion project will die, because it is complex from a technical and above all environmental point of view, and without political leadership on the part of the Catalan Government it will not go ahead. So far there has been rejection on their part.
Civil society in Catalonia has indeed made contributions and proposals to increase the capacity of intercontinental flights. Among the latter, the one that has sparked the most debate is that of the runway over the sea. Does it sound viable?
Aena and I personally welcome the public debate and the effort made by business organizations and prominent members of civil society. Aena is the largest airport manager in the world and the technicians of this company have been working for years on the expansion project that we presented in 2020. We had studied all the alternatives for years, including that of a runway over the sea. The project that we finally proposed [extending the third runway 500 meters to the east and a satellite terminal] is the one that we consider to reconcile in the most harmonious way possible three objectives: to turn El Prat into an intercontinental air center, and so it needs to increase its long-range capacity; minimize noise in neighboring municipalities, and minimize the environmental impact.
Both the Government and a part of civil society ask that the management of the Prat be done from the territory. Would they be willing to share the management of the airport with the Government?
We are open to strengthening existing institutional collaboration mechanisms and improving them. For example, the Airport Routes Development Committee of Barcelona Airport has been a resounding success and the evolution of Barcelona Airport over the last 20 years has been an extraordinary success story, a fact that has overwhelmed the forecasts of Aena itself and of all actors in the air sector. The network model is what explains this to a very important extent and, in fact, the international trend of the most competitive and efficient airport managers is to develop airport networks, which is Aena’s operating model. Collaboration mechanisms can be improved or strengthened, but at the same time we must remember that Aena belongs to its shareholders, we are listed on the stock market, and this reality is not neutral when assessing how you manage your main infrastructures.
Can the new appointments to the Ministries of Territory and Environment facilitate the dialogue on the airport?
I have known Ester Capella [territory councilor] for years and I have a very good opinion of her. He has great professional and political quality and hopefully his incorporation will serve to change the Generalitat Government’s opposition to the expansion project.
With the potential merger of Iberia and Air Europa, Barajas would become a major air hub. How would this process affect Barcelona airport?
I wouldn’t analyze it in terms of Madrid-Barcelona. The merger between Iberia and Air Europa would be good for all Spanish airports.
