"This is an airport, not a shopping mall"

CitadelNot building a new control tower has serious consequences for the operability of Menorca airport. On July 21, for example, the radar that makes it function failed, and flight delays occurred that were solely attributable to the deficiencies of the facility, the oldest in Spain.

This was denounced this Thursday by the 17 air traffic controllers who work there. “If on a summer evening, at 8 p.m., the radar fails again, what do we do with the passengers and tourists?”, asked the union delegate for the controllers, associated with USCA, Cristina Llobet. “And what if the Minorcans with a scheduled medical appointment cannot depart and lose their appointment?”, she adds.

Llobet says that “the problem is not only that the tower is old –the construction was done in 1969–, but it also conditions the modernization of the equipment and causes visibility limitations, since from up there we cannot see all the planes on the runway”. The characteristics of the tower –she warns– “prevent replacing and updating equipment. There is no control tower that has the air traffic of Menorca that has such old systems, to the point that the companies that manufactured them no longer exist and they cannot be replaced”. This forces the control tower technicians to “cannibalize” the equipment by using the old parts sent to them by other towers in the State that have indeed been modernized.

In the last year, incidents and breakdowns have multiplied. From a failure in the air conditioning system to the September flooding due to the rains, which forced the use of buckets over the equipment to contain the leaks, the detachment of ceiling tiles, and the fall of a cleaner from a ladder that no longer meets regulations.

Neither USCA nor the other union that has come out to demand it, Comissions Obreres, understand why the construction of the tower has been excluded from Aena's forecasts for the next 5 years, until 2031. Even more so when the replacement of the current tower already appeared in an initial proposal in 2003 and in 2010 the work was put out to tender. But the subsequent initiative, finally abandoned, to implement a virtual remote control tower in Menorca, as a pilot experience for all of Spain, has once again delayed the project.

“The surprise has been that, once the virtual tower was discarded, the proposal for a new physical tower was not resumed,” admits Llobet. The perplexity has been even greater upon seeing that, even so, Aena will invest 170 million euros to expand the gates and boarding areas and to increase the commercial surface area. “But this is an airport, not a shopping mall,” the controller reproaches, denouncing the desire to increase air traffic to 4.5 million passengers and 40,500 movements with the same structural and operational deficiencies that exist now.

The CCOO union delegate at Aena, Ramon Carreras, believes that the only solution is for “all institutions, parties, and business associations of Menorca to stop using the control tower as a political weapon, park their partisanship, walk hand in hand, and stand firm in Madrid to convince the Ministry of Transport and force Aena to rectify.” Carreras recalls that 51% of the Spanish airport management body is still in public hands and that “there is a social outcry in Menorca for us to be heard.” The airport, he highlighted, “is one of the three basic infrastructures for the island,” along with the hospital and the energy system, and must be taken into account.

The “further step” that the unionist demands experienced a first episode this noon at the headquarters of the Consell de Menorca, where the commitment of President Adolfo Vilafranca was secured to “take the lead and spearhead” the claim. “Aena’s investments must respond to the real needs of Menorca. It should not focus so much on things from an economic perspective,” said Vilafranca, who recalled that since February 2023, there have been up to three plenary agreements urging Aena to build the new tower. The Balearic Parliament and the Congress of Deputies have also done so, the last time just this week, with the officials of PSOE and Sumar, linked in the government of Spain, who have joined the claim without hesitation.

This very week, the president of the Council has addressed a letter to the president of Aena, Maurici Lucena, to express the institution's dissatisfaction for not having been able to participate in the definition of the actions planned for the airport. For this reason, he has formally requested that Aena establish a process of dialogue with the Council before developing any actions that could lead to an increase in operational capacity. "Decisions regarding a strategic infrastructure cannot be made behind the island's back," he concludes.