The Iberia and Renfe plan threatens up to 70% of regional airport traffic

Iberia and Renfe They confirmed a few days ago their union in a project to promote intermodality through a single ticket that unites long-haul train and plane. This boost to the transfer of traffic from short-haul aircraft to trains came just over two years after the first pilot of Train & Fly and follows in the footsteps of the progress project in the decarbonization of transport. But at the same time, it compromises the viability of regional airports for those who the route with Madrid accounts for up to 73% of your annual trafficas is the case of Pamplona.

This agreement is based on a intermodal product which will combine routes with origin or destination in Zaragoza, Seville, Malaga, Córdoba and Valladolid, Valencia, Alicante, León, Palencia, Pamplona, ​​Salamanca, Albacete, Zamora and Ourense and the Madrid-Barajas airport in one ticket. In this way, all of them will now be connected to Iberia’s network of 90 international destinations, mainly in Europe and Latin America, but also with the United States.

While cities near the capital that have no air connection with Barajasas is the case of Albacete, Zamora or even Valladolid and León, increase their connectivity, others in which there is an airport with direct connections with the capital, as is the case of Pamplona or even Santiago de Compostela -is not included in this project but Ourense, gateway to Galicia for high speed, is -they are afraid they will stop seeing planes landing and taking off Iberia.

The question about what will happen in the future with the flights of Iberia between these cities and Madrid is still an unknown to be resolved. In the sector they point out that this type of air connections are, at an economic level and for the most part, deficient and are maintained by the need to transport passengers in connection with long-haul flights, as is the case of those who go to Latin America, natural market of Spain. That is why it is possible to think, point out the same sources, that if travelers can reach the capital’s airport by train, Iberia could reduce the frequencies on these lines. “It is a movement that benefits both parties to the agreement,” they point out.

In this sense, of the destinations that have joined Train&Fly so far, which, according to the same sources, could be expanded even further, there are two airports where the connection with Madrid is key. This is the case of the Pamplona infrastructure, for which, according to data from 2019 -the last year before the outbreak of Covid-19-, flights with origin or destination in the capital accounted for up to 72.9% of total traffic. In total numbers, this route operated by Iberia moved 177,551 passengers out of a total of 243,498 that passed through the infrastructure that year. Today, Pamplona also has flights to Gran Canaria and Tenerife North operated by Binter.

Far from these figures, but also affected in a very important way, is the airport of Santiago de Compostela. In this sense, according to 2019 figures, this infrastructure received 2.9 million passengers, of which 722,281 took or arrived on a flight from Madrid. This means that almost 25% of the total traffic of the Rosalía de Castro in that exercise it is directly related to Madrid.

The rest of the airports to which Train&Fly could take away traffic, they would not accuse this project so much, since the connecting flights with the capital represent a single digit figure as they are larger airports with important international connections and tourist attraction poles, especially in the summer season.

In line with the 2030 Agenda

This project is in line with the Agenda 2030 and Spain 2050, two documents that advocate a more sustainable transport in which intermodality is key to achieving it. In this sense, the last of them includes the recommendation to prohibit flights on those routes that can be made by train in less than two and a half hours, that is, in a large part of the connections in which there are AVE. Although it is only a proposal, other countries such as France have already implemented similar measures with airlines.

According to sources in the sector when asked by this medium, the project, as it has been proposed, will receive a definitive boost with the arrival of the high-speed connection to Barajas. At this time, in case of making one of these routes, the traveler must get off the train in Atocha o en Chamartín, depending on the origin of the convoy, and take a Cercanías -free of charge- to the airport. When the high-speed connection with the capital’s infrastructure becomes a reality, this transfer will not be necessary, facilitating true intermodality.

The project for high speed to reach Barajas will be carried out in two phases, as announced a few months ago by the then head of the Ministry of Transport, José Luis Ábalos. The first of them is the one that will begin this year with the launch of the first of the tenders. The high-speed trains that now complete their journey in Chamartín -those who come from Galicia or Castilla y León- will then be able to continue to Madrid Barajas. They will do so by taking advantage of the current Cercanías routes, which will require an adaptation of the width.