The Lanzarote airport will face a profound transformation to solve the saturation problems in its facilities.
The César Manrique airport closed with almost nine million users last year, even though its current facilities are designed to serve just over eight million.
In fact, Lanzarote is among the ten Aena network infrastructures on the verge of operational saturation, sharing priority with major facilities such as Madrid-Barajas, Barcelona-El Prat, Palma de Mallorca, Seville, and Ibiza.
The roadmap designed by the central government foresees a growth in national air traffic that will escalate to 363.5 million users by 2031 and projects reaching 433 million by 2041.
In the official publications of the Ministry of Transport, capacity increases have only been broken down for the country's major airports: Madrid-Barajas will increase from 70 to 90 million passengers, and Barcelona-El Prat will raise its ceiling from 55 to 80 million.
For Lanzarote, the document omits a final passenger figure, but the scope of the planned reforms will give the infrastructure room for operational growth, and no, a new runway is not necessary for this.
According to Aena's air traffic statistics, the César Manrique Airport has closed recent years with around 65,000 commercial operations (takeoffs and landings) annually. According to the Lanzarote Airport Master Plan, under optimal conditions, it could reach a maximum of 100,000 flights per year.
But it is not necessary to reach that point; once the current saturation is corrected with increased surface area for check-in, security checks, boarding, and aircraft parking, just by adding 12,000 more operations per year, the airport could absorb 1.5 million additional passengers per year, and that without considering that airplanes will have more seats in the coming years.
To eliminate the "funnel effect" that occurs during peak hours, Aena will carry out a comprehensive renovation of the terminal building. The intervention will expand the check-in counter area and double the inspection lines at security checkpoints and passport control.
In the departures area, the usable surface area of the waiting rooms and the number of boarding gates will be increased. In the arrivals area, the work includes the remodeling of the baggage claim hall through the installation of new collection belts.
The works will be completed on the flight field with the expansion of the aircraft parking platform.
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