Imagine… an airport which was built by spending billions of rupees, which was shown the dream of becoming a big international air hub of Europe, where flights from all over the world are expected to come, and the same airport becomes completely deserted in a few years! This story may sound like the plot of a movie, but Spain’s Real Ciudad Airport is such a real, shocking and extremely expensive ‘failed project’. Today, whenever it is discussed, people remember it as “Spain’s Ghost Airport”.
Actually, Real Ciudad Airport was opened with great fanfare in 2009. More than €1.1 billion (about Rs 10,000 crore) was spent in making it. The Spanish government and investors were confident that it would become the country’s next major aviation hub, where European low-cost airlines would begin flights in large numbers.
The airport was built with very modern facilities. Its most special thing was the longest runway in Europe, whose length was about 4.1 kilometers. Additionally, the airport’s modern terminal had the capacity to handle 10 million passengers per year. Looking at these features, investors believed that this project would definitely prove to be a very profitable deal. But, this trust based on dreams did not last long. After the airport was built, the hopes on which it was built were shattered one by one, and within a few years this grand project came to a complete halt.
Biggest mistake: Airport built, but wrong location
This airport was built about 200 km away from Madrid. It was not at all convenient for people to travel so far and catch a flight, no matter how cheap the ticket was. According to The Mirror, the government had promised that a Madrid–Seville high-speed rail station would be built to the airport, allowing people to reach it in an hour. But this station was never built. Due to this, the number of passengers remained much less than expected. Initially many airlines like Air Berlin, Air Nostrum and Ryanair started flights. But due to less passengers, all three companies withdrew one by one. Ultimately Vueling was the last remaining airline, which closed its services in 2011. After this the airport became completely empty.
Bankrupt in three years!
It was impossible to run the airport without passengers. The operating companies ran up a debt of more than €300 million (about ₹2,700 crore) and the airport was closed in 2012. It became one of the largest ‘failed airport projects’ in the world at that time. The initial minimum price for selling the airport was kept at €100 million (approximately ₹900 crore). But no one showed interest in buying. According to The Mirror, at one time a Chinese group bid just €10,000 (about Rs 9 lakh) to buy it! This news spread like a joke in the international media and became a cause of embarrassment for Spain.
what happened in the end?
Several years later, in 2018, the airport was sold for just €56 million (approximately Rs 5,040 crore), which was much less than its original cost. It reopened in 2019, but is now a storage, maintenance and aircraft dismantling center. Many grounded aircraft were parked here during Covid, but it never became the major passenger hub for which it was built.
