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Associació Catalana de Professionals (ACP) promotes together with other Catalan associations and organisations the campaign supporting El Prat airport and the event that took place on the 22nd of March. We believe that it is important that citizens, individually, can also join the campaign and express their support to this initiative and make clear that from all professional and social fields, we are worried about our future as a country and that there is a strong common will of not showing indifference towards the challenges we come across.
In the following months, the Spanish government needs to make a decision about the running of El Prat airport. If this decision is not the most adequate one, it will strongly affect Catalan economical future choices in a world context where interconnections between main economic areas in the world are being defined.
At the moment, the challenge our airport is facing and on which its future depends, is the building and assignation of a new terminal which should make possible for Barcelona airport to step up and become a big international airport (the eighth in air transit in Europe in 2006), a big intercontinental airport (which it isn’t at the moment. Among the 30 first cities in Europe, Barcelona has the lowest percentage of flights outside the EU, only 8% of the total).
Nevertheless, we are also worried about recent events and news about the new terminal and its management. AENA, responsible of the management of the airport, has anounced that next December, the new Sud terminal will be working and that their slots distribution won’t be known until after local elections in May.
The centralised point of view of the minister and AENA, Iberia’s strategy, which consists of concentrating all international flight in the new T4 terminal in Barajas airport, makes us seriously dout about the role they are saving for Barcelona’s airport.
Aware of the interests that are being dealed with and of the need for society to give its voice in such an essential issue for our future.
WE CLAIM
 That with a new Terminal, El Prat airport should become a hub of intercontinental flights.
That, besides whether the hub needs to be shared or not, the final location for companies and airline alliances should be done transparently, that this decision should be based on objective criteria regarding customer service and that these criteria should be public.
That airport management should be individualised and from the territory, that is, that each airport should take care of its own management and with efficiency criteria, with the possibility of public and private participation.
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