corvera airport

I know some people can fly, but it's hard to beat Google Maps when you stick to the speedlimits, 56 min with no traffic

I rest my case.

I am sorry but this isnt the current route that is available, it is mapped from Corvera Town amnd you don't actually use the RM601 to access the airport, which is now connected by a new 100km per hour dual carriage

Google Maps isn't always correct when it isn't up to date with the new roads, one of the real benefits of local knowledge  

Some interesting posts and links over the 4 pages of this thread.

I laughed at the post about not getting stuck on the N332 between Orihuela Costa and Alicante, clearly by someone who is completely out of touch with travel in that area.

One question that never seems to get answered, where are all these passengers that are predicted to use Corvera going to come from ?

The latest government statements for Corvera are 4 - 5 million passengers by 2022. The airport will operate 11 flights per hour per day.

Corvera needs to hit 2 million passengers per year within the first 2 years of opening to be entitled to state aid under EU regulations, yet the majority of the first 2 years, if Corvera opens, it will be sharing passengers with San Javier.

OCPF I am local to this area and there is still a part of the N332, which is the stretch across the salt lakes, which is prone to congestion at peak times and of couse the other stretch by the new sale water plant, both of which have not been upgraded and have traffic problems fairly often

If you use the AP7 you can of course avoid the tolls by cutting through San Miguel  but agian the country local riads will slow you down

It is a valid query where the passengers will come from but it always interesting when you look at the passenger numbers that consistently growth in numbers at Alicante, but the decline in numbers at San Javier, surely not all of the passengers are travelling to The Alicante area, perhaos the problem is the lack or flights into San Javier, or perhpas the charges levied by AENA at each airport

Perhaps having 2 competiting operators there might be a more even split in flights between the 2 airports

The other point is that Corvera is an international airprt looking to attract routes from outside Europe in a rapidly growing market, perhaps if the rates are reasonable some flight could move from Alicante to Corvera

Thanks for your response inspectahomespain. The N332 is now also congested at La Zenia due to the connection with Zenia Boulevard. The airport bus to Alicante from Torrevieja avoids the N332.

Passenger figures at San Javier continue to decrease, which would suggest there is a downturn in interest in the area rather than lack of flights. If there was the demand, the airlines would have increased flights. San Javier has never been stretched to its full capacity.

I work with Middle East real estate investors who put substantial amounts of money into Murcia and the Southern Costa Blanca, and they only see Covera as another regional airport. They saw plans for Corvera a few years ago, and I will be honest laughed because of the hype the Murcian government gave to it. They compared it to Bristol International Airport.

I would be surprised if any flights transfer from Alicante to Corvera. If you exclude the budget airlines, the other flights arriving at Alicante are business orientated. Even the daily Air Nostrum Madrid service from San Javier is empty most of the time.

Maybe Corvera could serve the cruise ships at Cartagena ? But there is no reason why San Javier could not have done this already if the demand was there.

Thank you OCPF for trying to bring this thread back on track. It is of minor concern which route anyone takes from one airport to another. The difference of about 15 minutes is neither here or there. The main point is IF Corvera opens where are all its passengers going to come from. As you state under present statements, MJV will remain open for up to 2 years. What has not been aired is that the shops/concessions at MJV have legal 'leases' for a minimum of 5 years and I heard some for 20 years. These lesees will have to be compensated and this will be yet a few more million euro! Also if both airports will be running in tandem then one will be doubling up on staff. I mean specialist staff like air traffic control, immigration etc. These are specialists and once trained might only have a 2 year work expectation.

We also all wonder where all these extra passengers are going to come from. It is all very well saying they might come from eastern Europe and further but then Corvera will have to spend millions euro on advertising. Yet again where is this money going to come from? The maths do not add up whichever way you look at it.

One can only hope that the E.U. will realise what a complete waste of money Corvera is and decide not to allow Murcia to lend them the €200 (odd) million that us poor ratepayers in the region are already paying for. I saw somewhere that at the moment Murcia is paying €22,000 A DAY in interest on this loan! As Murcia is already 'bust' why should they pour good money after bad except to recoup this money from the original promoters whether it is a company or the politions who pushed this airport through who probably had a personal interest in it being built. No names no pack drill, but we all know who I am referring to.

We all need to find a bookmaker to give us odds on when and if Corvera will open!!!!!!!

Yes hands up, in my case I would benefit from the airport openning, I already do by renting properties to existing airport staff but I was nit involved in planning or any of the numerous articles being published in the UK or Spanish press

Steone good point about the journey time, which is what I was trying to make, Corvera geographically in an ideal loaction to service a much wider area than San Javier, with better roads and established travel links

Concessions & shops, I use San Javier on a regular basis and it is one of the most expensive and poorly serviced for shops, limited hit food and a Pan plus of course the new shoe shop and duty free, compared to Alicante this is a joke and in Corvera there is a ,uch larger area already ready. I believe that it these outlets were offered a move they would be interested

As far as the car hire people & independant parking people are concerned many have already made provisions to move to new facilities around Corvera so they won''t be looking for compensation and the key contracts is for the company that operates the public parking but of course this is an issue for the operator AENA to resolve

OCPF have a look at what percentage now the flights form budget airlines represent of the total flights into Alicante and Murcia I believe that for Alicante is is 91% and San Javier 97%, Ryanair now accounts for one third of all Alicante traffic

It isn't the airport that necessarly advertise the destinaton, their key task is to sign uo the airlines to get the routes and the government to carry on promoting the benefits of the region to attract visitors, how much advertising do you see AENA doing for the airports or regions, the airline and travel orgainsations bring in the passengers, if a route isn't viable it gets cancelled

It is interesting that what nobody has figures on is where the ulimate destinaltion is for peoople that arrive at Alicante and this is something that will not be published. My own example is that I live in Murcia, can fly form either airport but make a booking based totally on price and availability, like most people. I can however confirm that 63% of people that visit my site fly into Alicante and 37% Murcia, based on proce and availability of flights so there is demaod if the airlines put the flights on.

With the staffing comments you are absolutely correct, yes it is stupid that staff will be duplicated across 2 parallel running airports but then again we have a major problem with unemployment locally

I know because of my holiday business that we need more promotion and the convience of having an airport that was centrally in the region with a good range of services and proper transport links would help the region

inspectahomespain I was not 'fingering' when I mentioned certain people making money out of Corvera. I was thinking about a certain 'gentleman' that has moved from Murcia to Brussels. Again no names!!!!

I am not a frequent flyer but I have noticed that food and drink at Alicante is more expensive than MJV. However that is of no consequence to this thread.

Another thought is the charges the airlines are going to pay to use the respective airports. IF AENA have any business sense they will offer airlines a very attractive cost just to maintain and possibly increase the number of flights to Alicante. The new boy on the block will have shareholders and loans to pay and therefore MIGHT not be able to compete on price with the established rival. I know that if I was in charge of pricing at AENA I would try and squeeze Corvera out of business by offering rates that they could not compete with. However as this is Spain I doubt if that wouyld even cross their minds.

I have been looking into my cristal ball and I can see that if Corvera opens then it will close within 5 years as it has not attracted enough flights. Then, as MJV would have already closed,  the only airport serving this area will be Alicante and as a sort of monopoly the charges will, excuse the pun, go through the roof!!!

Oh how nice to be such an up-beat, positive, glass half full person I am!!!!!!!!
 

The points OCPF and steone make are quite valid. St Javier is loosing passengers annually and many of its destinations are rather obscure, old military airfields. The winter schedules are suspending flights to many destinations from St Javier and if MJV was a profitable route - the grabbing budget airlines  would not turn their backs on it. In the first 6 months of 2014 MJV hosted under half a million passengers - so assume 1m for the year compared to Stansteds 17.5m and East Midlands 9m.

Lets assume that the EU allows Murcia to take the deficient loan over and let us further assume that MJV stays open and Corvera will open, and can attract 50% of MJV's passengers  - how will it even afford to pay a ticket collector with an annual footfall of half a million? The main questionthat has never been answered is  'Why would passengers want to fly to Corvera?' There is nothing there and little prospect of any future attractions. The Paramount fiasco is still a commemorative stone in the middle of a field, the much heralded Marina de Cope is a dead duck and the Cartagena passenger ship visitor facility is no longer mentioned.

This airport needs around 9.5m passnegers (roughly the same as Alicante and half of Malaga's throughput) to show profit - where on earth are they going to come from? Only Spain could make such a spectacular cock-up.

It would be interesting if you were able to compare the cost for a flight to land in Alicante  for an airline, compared to San Javier and what is done to encourage the airlines to land at these airports

Certainly one of the most cmmon complaints we hear over the Winter period is a lack of flights from Ireland and Northern England into San Javier , epecially for people visiting the Orihuela Costa area and an actual increase in the shedule for these flights, over the same period last year, into Alicante, so its isn't actually suspending but moving the schedule, the demand is still there and growing

Passengesr vote with their pockets and if operational costs can be reduced the flight costs are reduced and in the case od AENA remember that they are a government controlled so it may be more difficult to reduce their fees, compared to a privately run organisation so what about of Corvera were able to maintain the Winter schedules and take say 30% of the Alicante business

As I said before nobody really says where people that fly into Alicante final destinations are and it is viewed by some that the majority and control that AENA have, operating 2 airports, isn't healthy for the growth on Murcia

Question how much money is San Javier loosing bbased on passenger numbers, are AENA focusing on Alicante

Has anybody else heard the rumour that the officials at Corvera approached our 'friendly' Irishman to get his business at Corvera and when they quoted their landing fees he just laughed and said that they were far far too high and he would not be using Corvera at those prices. As he has over a third of the landings at Alicante and over 50% at MJV this does not bode well for Corvera.

Comments please in a brown envelope!!!!!!

How ca you possibly call him a friendly irishman

With the recent announcement that the decision for the European loan will now not be made till December 18th things are not looking great for the airport with claims made that the politicians are going for plan B but nobody seems to know what plan B is

It seems to me no money, no airport and with local electians  looming 2015 will be intestesting, but they are still recruiting staff

inspectahomespain if you notice the word friendly was in inverted commas. At least we now know who I was commenting on!!!!!! Would you have preferred me to call him 'our favourite' Irishman?

The news you are referring to was posted on !murciatoday on Saturday. I am just surprised that you are the first to mention it.

P.S. Anyone want to buy any equipment, that has not been used, to fit out an airport?

Give Corvera to the Spanish Airforce and keep MJV for civilian traffic. I only use Alicante in the winter because I can't get flights into MJV then

I read the Branson was in negotiations to buy Corvera for his space project at least thats what the Real estate guys are saying LOL

The many fans of San Javier airport can now join an online petition in support

https://www.change.org/p/gobierno-de-la-regi%C3%B3n-de-murcia-no-al-cierre-del-aeropuerto-de-murcia-san-javier-en-beneficio-del-aeropuerto-privado-de-corvera-murcia-goverment-do-not-close-murcia-san-javier-airport-to-benefit-corvera-private-airport

I'm impartial, but you've got to think that surely a petition on this subject is a complete waste of time?

In the year 2000 possibly, but not after it's built, not even in Spain!

You are probably right re petitions Acer, but when you read articles like this, you really do wonder where all these auditors were protecting taxpayers money, at the time.

http://murciatoday.com/san-javier-named-among-spanish-airports-on-which-eu-investment-has-been-wasted_23960-a.html#.VJGrbYA4N8

Now apparently Aeromur have been given just a few days to put their proposal together for Corera, you can understand why the locals resort to petitions to encourage support.

Congratulations to Corvera Airport who have just completed successfully the calibration flight trials, the press release having just been issued ! 

This just proves that there was no way this airport could have ever opened 2 years ago, unless it was for day trippers going on a sightseeing tour.

They only scheduled the testing for when they had the push from the government minister and the necessary staff in place to complete all of the tests, which they did not have 2 years ago

Even more staff arruved this week so not sure what is going on, even met the guy that drives the follow me car, for the planes and suggested to him that he doesn't have much work to do at the moment