City Hall wrote to the former Secretary of State for Infrastructure, Housing and Transport, the President of AENA and the Director of Palma airport, Jose Antoni Alvarez, last summer outlying its reasons for Palma no longer being a 24-hour airport. The council wants to reduce its environmental footprint and enable local residents to sleep more peacefully at night.
Palma Council has asked for an “Action plan” to be drawn up “in order to guarantee a healthy living environment for the local community, residents’ rights to a private life and a reduction in emissions”.
The council wants to see Palma airport, as it should be called and not Palma de Mallorca airport considering the official name of the capital was changed to Palma in 2016, follow the model used by other international airports such as Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, Schiphol and all civil airports in Germany.
They are closed to non emergency or humanitarian aircraft between 11pm and 6am.
The council has also asked AENA to install more equipment to measure noise and pollution levels.
Any such move, however, would force many of the airlines operating in and out of Palma over night, especially British airlines, in to rescheduling their entire flight movements and programmes, which will not be welcomed. Palma is, however, one of AENA’s most profitable airports and it is unlikely to want to change that.
