Take-off for Alicante and Leon

The need for air travel that is increasingly decentralized has led to Alicante and Leon raising the capacity of their airports to respond to the needs of their passengers and airplanes as forecast for the years to come. The enlargement of Alicante airport, which includes a new processing area, dock and car park annexed to the old terminal, will allow at least a doubling of passengers using the airport every year with installations prepared so that up to 42 planes an hour can take off.

For its part, the installations at the new terminal of Leon's Vírgen del Camino airport has quadrupled the capacity to 520 passengers per hour, tripled passenger spaces and doubled those available for aircraft. The fi gures for both projects speak for themselves. In the case of Alicante airport, the equivalent of 193 Olympic swimming pools full of concrete was used, and electric cable which would cover the distance between Alicante and Norway. The surface of marble used could cover 14 football pitches, whereas in Leon Airport just the surface destined for aircraft would occupy the equivalent of 5,970 stadia.

Efficient consumption

To tackle these expansions, however, ACCIONA has not only looked for attractive and functional design, it has opted decidedly for the optimization of energy consumption during the useful life of the installations, such that it has been necessary to take in the special requisites of an airport and the climate of each zone. In this way, the Company has opted to take advantage of the natural light, using glass in the large areas of the airport. At the same time it has strengthened the thermal insulation of the opaque parts of the building and employed the most thermally effi cient materials.

The work of almost 2,000 people on the project has made the expansion of Leon airport possible and it has functioned since the beginning of October 2010, while that at Alicante is at the fi nal stage of tests.