Busy time at Palma Airport

THE weekend with most air traffic at Son Sant Joan Airport, with 3,300 flights and 548,000 passengers, saw 150 flights delayed.

Between 7am and 8pm on Sunday (August 30), 73 departures from Palma and 77 arrivals in the city were delayed, and over the weekend 37 flights in total were delayed for more than one hour.

The worst delay was a Condor flight from Frankfurt which left Germany six hours late.

Saturday was the busiest day, with 964 flights in total and 160.458 passengers. The flights which suffered most delays within Spain were those connecting to Ibiza.

The first two days of September were also extremely busy, with 1,358 flights and 230,472 passengers.

Meanwhile, the three companies in charge of handling at the airport, Globalia, Iberia and Acciona, are reportedly in the middle of a price war attempting to attract as many airlines to hire their services as possible.

Their services include luggage assistance, runway operations, loading and transporting luggage, amongst other processes.

Unions complain that prices are being brought down by up to 50 per cent. The minimum set by airport authority AENA is €1,300 per flight and some years it has reached as much as €3,000. Putting prices down is feared to have a knock-on effect for the working conditions of the companies’ employees. Union representatives say the only ones to benefit from it are the airlines, but that AENA must make sure that quality is maintained as well as working conditions for staff.