The rates of Aena will increase by 3.82% (0.43 euros) on average each year between 2027 and 2031, as the airport operator has announced in the Airport Regulation Document (DORA III), while airlines are asking for a 4.9% reduction.
Aena has presented to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) the DORA III that it approved this week in an extraordinary board of directors meeting and which includes investments of 12,888 million euros, of which 9,991 million come from the regulated part (financed by tariffs) and the rest, from commercial activity, an amount that more than triples the 3,542 million of the previous DORA, which concludes this year.
The battle of the fees between Aena and the airlines is recurrent: the president and CEO of the manager, Maurici Lucena, has defended that those proposed are "pure mathematics", while the Association of Airlines (ALA) assures that the company's calculations underestimate the growth of air traffic, one of the vectors for composing the fee.
The rates, Lucena has said, are "pure mathematics", since they are set based on operating expenses (opex), the amortization of the investment, and a "reasonable" return on investment "calculated with theoretical models", which is known as WAAC for its acronym in English, and they also take into account the forecasts of air traffic growth.
Thus, the increase in traffic that the public majority company has foreseen will be 1.3% until 2031 (1,690 million passengers in the five years) and an increase in WAAC of 9% is proposed, "which reflects the financial and risk situation of the period".
Meanwhile, ALA and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) understand that traffic will rise by 3.6% and are requesting that 4.9% reduction, a level they consider compatible with Aena's investment plan for the five-year period.
ALA defends that the underestimation of traffic "has been reiterated since 2017 and in 2025 reached 17.3% deviation", while the return for regulated investments (WAAC) of 9% is "far above any comparable regulated sector in Europe, which are between 5% and 8%".
Ryanair, especially critical of the Spanish tariff system, to which it attributes having reduced its capacity in Spain by two million seats, understands that Aena's proposal "is based on false assumptions, such as unrealistic traffic forecasts and oversized spending on facilities".
Lucena has sent a message to the companies: even if they pass it directly on to the cost of tickets it would only have an impact of 0.43 euros, but "it could also go against their margin", that is, absorb that increase in their results.
He has also responded to the president of Ryanair, Michael O'Leary, of whom he has said that "he is a little impatient because he is about to collect a bonus of 100 million and he stirs up all the financial variables".
"We are lucky that Spanish airports do not depend on what Ryanair says," he added.
Almost 13 billion investment
The total investment proposed by Aena in the next period is 12,888 million, of which almost 10,000 will come from regulated activity. For the moment, it has not detailed the investments for each airport.
The DORA III includes the start of works at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport, with the expansion of T4 and the T4 Satellite and new processor for terminals 1, 2, and 3, which already began with the current DORA and will continue beyond 2031, with an investment of approximately 4 billion euros in successive cycles.
In Barcelona improvements to T2, reconfiguration of T1, runway extension, and a new Satellite Terminal 1 are planned, but the bulk of these works will go to the next DORA due to the environmental permits required and will amount to slightly more than 3,000 million euros.
The renovation of Barcelona airport is five years late, according to Lucena, because the previous presidency of the Generalitat, from ERC, "blocked the expansion".
In airports of tourist destinations such as Málaga, Alicante, Tenerife South and North, Valencia, Ibiza, Lanzarote and Menorca, expansions or renovations of the terminals are also planned, mainly due to the need to increase boarding areas after the United Kingdom's exit from the EU, which requires more border controls.
In Bilbao the expansion of the terminal is also planned and in Melilla its renovation.
In Málaga the investment will be around 1.5 billion; in Alicante-Elche, 1.154 billion, and in Tenerife about 800 million for the northern and southern airports.
The president of Aena has clarified that the financing of capital will be done through external debt, and the percentage of profit dedicated to shareholder payments (payout) will be maintained at 80%, and all of this compatible "if necessary, with some international operation".
The executive vice president of Aena, Javier Marín, has explained that many airports are at traffic figures above their capacity: Madrid has a forecast of 73 million passengers compared to a nominal capacity of 70 million, and Barcelona, with more than 60 million passengers forecast, has a nominal capacity of 55 million, which explains the need for expansion works.