The largest passenger plane in the world parks at Teruel airport
In Europe's large long-stay car park, 90 planes are already "sleeping", including two giant Airbus A380s that arrived this Saturday
The unsuspecting tourists who, in better times, were driving on the A-1512 road from Teruel to Albarracín used to look in shock to their right, at the cleared area where dozens of planes were parked in an orderly manner, or at the sky, surprised by the landing or take-off of some huge airship. There are no passengers at the Teruel airport , a capital of just 36,000 inhabitants. Its business is different: in eight years it has established itself as the largest MRO (Maintenance and Repair Organization) airport platform in Europe.
Parking and keeping a Boeing 747 or Airbus A340 in good condition for weeks or months does not seem like an easy matter. Less than 20 kilometers from Teruel 90 planes "sleep" , many of them large. In fact, they have been waiting for days for the arrival of two A380s , the world's largest aircraft , from Air France, which have finally landed on the Teruel runway this Saturday. When descending on these unsheltered lands it has seemed like a sequence from an action movie, unthinkable in this place. It is not a unique case: on April 16 Lufthansa announced that it will bring 17 Airbus 340-600s here.
The little known history of the Teruel airport began in 2007, with a consortium made up of the Government of Aragon (60%) and the City Council (40%). From the beginning they decided that it was not a good idea to build a passenger airport, so the alternative of an industrial airport for the parking, recycling and maintenance of airplanes was consolidated . It was a cheap project (40 million euros) and successful. In 2011 the works were completed. At that time there was no such center in Spain.
The Teruel field covers 120 hectares, 80 of which are managed under a concession by Tarmac Aerosave - owned by the Airbus, Safran and Suez groups -, a leading company in Europe, with headquarters in Tarbes-Lourdes, Toulouse and ... Teruel . At the moment there are more airplanes on the ground at other airports, such as Adolfo Suárez Madrid Barajas or Istanbul , with about 170. However, conventional passenger aerodromes are not designed for this very specific function, in which Teruel stands out, which plans to expand its facilities with a hangar that would hold two A380s.
The image of the Mojave airplane graveyard in the United States flies in the minds of aviation fans. The Aragonese MRO is not that, explains Alejandro Ibrahim, general director of Teruel Airport. In fact, only 10% of its planes end up dismantled. Many expect a change in ownership or market conditions. Teruel offers cheaper prices, good weather , with 240 days of sunshine, essential details, and a specialized team made up of about 150 people. The result: that map of European aviation that shows one of the capitals of empty Spain.
