The three infrastructures managed by Aeroports de Catalunya, which are the airports of Lleida – Alguaire, Andorra – La Seu d’Urgell and the Aerodrome de la Cerdanya, close in 2023 with 34 companies installed and a record number of 409 direct jobs. There are 5 new companies and a 12% increase in employment compared to 2022. Lleida-Alguaire Airport has incorporated three of the new companies, one of which has been Compost El Segrià, which occupies one of the two new buildings built this 2023 in the new airport campus space, from where it will promote a project on satellite management and monitoring of composting plants in remote areas.
Lleida – Alguaire Airport has reached 97 students in training in 2023, 22% more than the previous year. This figure is expected to be exceeded in the coming years with the arrival of hundreds of Asian students, according to the planning of the pilot training company BAA Training, present at the Airport since 2018. In fact, they are expected to new hangars for training aircraft and spaces dedicated to these students.
The training activity is joined by the CESDA pilot school, which set up a seasonal base from May to October and which intends to establish itself in this format in the coming years.
As for the New Space area, rocket engine tests increased by 40% compared to the previous year, reaching 52 annual tests. It is expected that this growth will be consolidated thanks to the adaptation of the space that is being carried out by Pangea Aerospace as part of the project to expand and condition the test bench of subcomponents (ignitors, injectors, materials, etc.) and which must be completed next May.
On the other hand, the two aircraft maintenance and preservation companies that now work at the Airport, which are Servitec and JAS – this newly incorporated – have been preserving and also scrapping a total of 16 aircraft this 2023. The number is lower than in the years of the pandemic, when due to the reduction in aeronautical activity, many aircraft remained in Lleida for preservation.
Another line of business to highlight for its experienced growth is the lease and fees of hangars. In Lleida-Alguaire, rental income from these facilities increased by 5 in the last year.
Andorra-La Seu airport is consolidating itself as an airport for regional commercial, corporate and aerial work flights. In this area, the Chilean aerial works company Air Lama has recently established a new base of operations there, adding to the already existing presence of aerial works at the airport. In 2023, this type of operations that provide direct services to the territory accounted for 2,421 movements.
The airport is also the base of the Special Actions Group of the Generalitat Firefighters (GRAE) – which is expected to expand during 2024 -, which carried out 517 operations from the airport in 2023, and of activities against fires and fumigation, with 152 operations.
In addition, this 2023 has been the year of consolidation of the route to Madrid, although with a slightly lower number of passengers, mainly explained by the bad weather behavior in some periods of 2023 and by technical problems with Air’s aircraft Nostrum, which forced an unusual percentage of flights to be canceled or diverted. By 2024, the increase in passengers is expected to be brought about by the new regular seasonal flight between the airport and Palma, inaugurated last January 5, which also allows connections with Mahón and Ibiza.
On the other hand, commercial flight activity in Lleida-Alguaire, on the other hand, is very mature and no substantive changes are expected. This 2023 closed the year with 31,113 passengers, while 9,380 passengers passed through Andorra-La Seu. In terms of annual operations at airports, 2023 closed with a cumulative total of more than 17,400 operations, for 4,653 operations in Andorra-La Seu. In the case of the Cerdanya aerodrome, the number of operations was 9,460, a figure similar to that of 2022.
