1997: A Major Upgrade for a Spanish Airport

April 12, 1997

A new and larger terminal for the international airport on the Spanish island of Mallorca (also known as Majorca) was officially inaugurated. Mallorca is the largest of Spain’s Balearic Islands, an archipelago in the western region of the Mediterranean Sea. The Mallorcan city of Palma is the capital of those islands, which collectively form an autonomous community and province of Spain. Palma de Mallorca Airport — also called Son Sant Joan Airport — is five miles (eight kilometers) east of Palma.

This airport dates back to 1960, when it was first opened to both domestic and international traffic. The facility’s present-day main terminal was built to keep pace with the dramatic increase of people flying to and from that airport on a daily basis. The new terminal, which is featured in the accompanying photo taken in 2013, was designed by Mallorcan architect Pere Nicolau Bonet. It has played a pivotal role in enabling this airport to handle 25 million passengers each year, with a capacity to dispatch approximately 12,000 of those individuals per hour.

Palma de Mallorca Airport is the third busiest airport in all of Spain. It serves as the main base for Air Europa (Air Europa Lineas Aéreas, S.A.U.), one of the country’s largest airlines.

Photo Credit: Wusel007 (licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en)

Additional information on airports in Spain is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Spain