Airports that open their doors at five in the morning when their workload hits in the afternoon. Facilities that only receive one flight per day. These are some actual situations that Aena, the world's leading airline operating group, is paying for. The company's debt burden is nearly 15 billion euros.
It is hard to justify this kind of spending to Spanish taxpayers (Aena is a public company) considering Spain's economic condition. In just over two weeks, the Ministry of Public Works will unveil an ambitious renovation plan in an attempt to balance the supply and demand of flights. The plan will affect 17 airports and at least 500,000 passengers. Aena currently operates 47 airports.
To increase efficiencies, Public Works proposes adjusting the operating hours of various airfields, reducing open air traffic hours from 2,000 to 708. The plan, an idea that ought to be extended to other state-run businesses (for example, a streamlining was carried out in the Social Security department already), could run up against resistance from labor unions, as it involves a revision to current labor categories. This disadvantage shouldn't interfere in Aena's structural overhaul, which were started by the former Ministry of Public Works with a salary revision for air traffic controllers. That said, the same measure insists that Public Works cuts concessions to the highway system, which is in danger of collapse.
