Operators will be offered a new airport in Catalonia Oct 06, 2009
On December 17th in the city of Lerida – one of the four capitals of Spanish Catalonia – will open up a brand new airport. The airport will be able to receive up to 400 thousand passengers per year, while serving A-320, Boeing737 and Boeing757 aircrafts. Vincens Capdevila, the development manager at the Lleida-Alguaire Airport, announced in an interview with RATA-news that until April 2010 the airport will only receive travelers from the Schengen zone due to a number of insufficiencies in customs and border control measures. And as early as April the airport will become a fully international airport.
The benefits of Lleida-Alguaire Airport consist in its proximity to the ski resorts of Andorra and Catalonian Pyrenees. The capital of Andorra is only 150 km away from the airport compared with the 300km commute to Barcelona. Proximity will allow operators who decide to take advantage of this new transportation solution to shorten the time of commute from 3 hours to 1,45-50. European tour-operators, and the British in particular, currently use the airport in Toulouse, France in order to transport tourists to Andorra, the French and Spanish Pyrenees. It will become increasingly more convenient to send flights through Lleida, in order to attract charter flight providers from the main airport of Catalonia – in Barcelona – to Lleida-Alguaire. The management of the new airport offers significant discounts for ground maintenance of aircrafts.
According to Vincens Capdevila, all the airports of Spain (about 45) work based on the same tariffs system. During Lleida's first year of operation all aircrafts will receive free ground maintenance. And during the 2010-2011 season, handling will cost 50% of the standard fee. Next season after that, discounts will be 20%.
In addition, the airport will offer marketing support to Russian operators who decide to redirect their traffic from other airports to Lleida. The amount of support will depend on the number of flights to be redirected. The people at Lleida hope that the airport will contribute to the growth of Russian tourists interest in the ski resorts of the Catalonian Pyrenees, which boast 11 resorts and 460 km of ski slopes. The largest resort is called Boqueria, offers skiing from slopes 2800 meters above sea level. There is a great infrastructure here, 30 thousand hotel rooms, modern tram ways and snow guns. Amazing views open to the observer from the ski slopes – one can see Roman churches built right in the mountains.
Cristina Ionitskaya, the deputy director of the Catalonia office in Eastern Europe, announced that during the fiscal year of 2008, there were 290 thousand Russian tourists who visited the region. During the first half of the current year and according to the feeback received from tour operators, the tourist flow has contracted by 15-20%, and judging by the sales and booking dynamics, it can be expect that the same result will be registered for the whole year 2009.
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