Demands for a second runway for Alicante-Elche Airport

In a statement on Friday, Toni Pérez, head of the Alicante Provincial Council, said that he had learnt that the Ministry of Transport had put out to bid for 20 million euros the work of writing up plans to change the Alicante-Elche Miguel Hernández Airport’s terminal and traffic area.

“Our airport cannot continue to operate for much longer without a second runway, which any international airport with our characteristics already has, and without having a rail connection to the cities of Alicante or Elche,” he added.

Because of this, the President of the Provincial Council said that the lack of these two projects “slows the growth of the airport and, by extension, of one of our main industries.” “They are two essential infrastructures, which, however, the Government of Pedro Sánchez insists on ignoring, while it is willing to invest 1.7 billion in the expansion and the third runway of El Prat,” he said.

Because of this, he has asked for “equal treatment and equal investment for a province that has been the last in terms of central government funding for too long.”

In this vein, he brought up the results of a recent study by the Alicante Chamber of Commerce that looked at how profitable and possible it would be to build this second runway. Speaking about this, he stressed that not building this infrastructure “would hurt the province’s GDP and risk 800 million euros a year that wouldn’t be made, of which more than 700,000 would have a direct effect.”

“We are not talking about a whim, but rather a necessity for the growth and development of the Costa Blanca, one of the most powerful destinations in Europe and the world,” said the state official.

During the same time, Pérez has pushed for the airport to have a rail link. “When we talk about wanting to be a sustainable destination, we are also referring to communications and it is not possible that the only way to get to or from the airport is via roads,” he said, while regretting that the Alicante terminal “is the only one of the large European airports that lacks a railway connection.”