The president and CEO of Aena, Maurici Lucenahas advanced that the company will «surely» chain two consecutive years2023 and 2024, of activity and profit records. During his speech at the «la Caixa» Economy and Society Foundation Chair, the main executive of the airport manager stated that «Aena is approaching an average of one million passengers a day» in the world, taking into account both the 46 airports in the network in Spain as well as the 17 in Brazil and the London-Luton airport. Lucena has also highlighted that «Spanish airports work well, manage a record volume of air traffic every day without any notable incidents and they have sufficient capacity to accommodate the demand for flights in the short and medium term.» In this sense, he has detailed that various expansion projects have already been launched in those infrastructures that are close to reaching their maximum capacity, except «the unfortunate exception of Barcelona«. However, the president and CEO of Aena has referred to the Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport expansion project with hope: «Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain need the Airport to expand to generate prosperity.» Thus, he celebrated «the brave political reorientation» of the position of the Government of the Generalitatrecently announced by the new president, Salvador Illa. In any case, Lucena has made it clear that The expansion of the Josep Tarradellas Barcelona-El Prat Airport is very complex«also in the environmental field, and the project that is finally approved must be designed by experts.»
AIRPORT RATES
As for the Aena airport ratesLucena has said that They are the lowest in all of Europe «by far»estimating its reduction in real terms at 31% between 2015 and 2023 and recalled that airlines, passengers and, ultimately, the entire tourism sector benefit from this. To this, as he has said, contributes the network model with which Aena operatesthat allows to reduce production costs thanks to strong economies of scale and the savings derived from «huge purchasing volumes», as well as the «export» of best practices between airports, which improve the efficiency and quality of the services provided. For all these reasons, Aena is also implementing this network model in the 17 airports managed in Brazil and that already move 20% of that country's air traffic. Faced with the social unrest of some sectors due to the perception of a excess tourismthe president and CEO of Aena has indicated that it is the first sector of economic activity in Spain, with a relative weight of 14-15% of GDPand which has contributed to the «spectacular» transformation of our country's economy since the 1980s, currently being the main differential feature of the greatest relative economic growth of Spain in the European Union. In light of these data, and for the protection of the general interest, Lucena considers that the bulk of the regulation should emanate from political decisions, not business ones, and, in any case, «quantitative restrictions should probably be an instrument of last resort«, he concluded.