Sunday was the busiest day of the year to date for Balearic airports with planes taking off and landing every minute. There were 1,537 operations, which meant that every minute an aircraft allegedly packed with tourists arrived or left the islands.
The intensity of arrivals and departures meant that the Balearic airports were packed with passengers on Sunday, to the extent that almost 20,000 people passed through one of the islands’ three airports at some point.
Palma’s Son Sant Joan airport operated the most flights on Sunday, with 938 flights, most of them international (707) and the rest (231) domestic. Ibiza handled a total of 402 movements, 271 of which were international and 131 domestic. Finally, Minorca, had a total of 197 operations this Sunday, 90 domestic and 107 international.
That said, air traffic was still 2.04% down on 2019, before the pandemic, when 1,569 operations were recorded.
One of the consequences of the massive arrival of tourists is the long queues that form to get a taxi in arrivals. And the massive number of cabbies waiting at Son Sant Joan makes it very difficult to catch a taxi in Palma.
Air traffic controllers reported on Sunday that there was an incident without consequences, when a plane suffered a hydraulic fluid leak in the north taxiway, which forced them to change the configuration of runways in Palma. The spacing between aircraft was increased and there were some minor delays.
And with the UK school holidays looming, the airports are only going get busier.