Menorca airport plans put Aena under pressure

Menorca airport plans are facing a fresh political challenge after PP senator Cristóbal Marqués asked Aena president Maurici Lucena to appear before the joint Congress-Senate commission on island affairs. Marqués made the request on Wednesday, 23 September 2026, seeking a personal account of the work set out in DORA III, the regulatory document covering the airport. He says the plans would raise summer capacity, while Aena, according to the PP, describes them as improvements and rejects that claim.

The row centres on aircraft parking areas, gates and passenger boarding bridges. Marqués argues that enlarging those facilities would allow the airport to handle more aircraft and passengers at the same time, particularly in the busiest summer months.

He says Aena must explain why it is planning infrastructure for more simultaneous arrivals and departures while denying a capacity increase. The senator has also accused the airport operator of failing to give clear answers to earlier parliamentary questions on the scale, impact and timetable of the works.

Marqués said he had worked with the Consell de Menorca after a new control tower was left out of the first DORA III draft. The PP wants that tower included and says it will bring initiatives before all institutions to block any increase in airport capacity.

The party says it backs modernisation, safety improvements and better year-round connections. But it opposes changes that it believes could pack even more flights and passengers into the months when Menorca is already under greatest pressure.

Topics: Politics

Source: Europa Press / Mallorca.com