Palma de Mallorca Airport, also known as Son Santjoan International Airport or simply as Palma Airport (IATA: PMI, ICAO: LEPA) is a Spanish Aena airport located 8 km from the city center of Palma de Mallorca.
It is strategically located between the summer resorts of the bay of Palma (sp) and the city, on the site of a former military base still in existence. It was inaugurated in the 1960s, the time of the great tourist boom in the Balearic Islands, to replace the old Son Bonet Airport (which is still in operation). Nearby is also the Son San Juan Air Base, operated by the Spanish Air Force, with which it shares runways.
It has had successive extensions, the last one in 1997 by the Mallorcan architect Pere Nicolau Bover. It has a single passenger terminal divided into four blocks that can be used independently (A, B, C, D), as well as two parallel runways (06L-24R and 06R-24L) of 3270 and 3000 meters in length respectively with ILS at their heads, usable in low visibility conditions, allowing a high number of operations per hour.
The construction of the third runway of palma airport, paralyzed due to the Territorial Plan of Mallorca, is still pending.
It is well communicated with Palma de Mallorca through the Levante highway and two urban bus lines. Recently it has been proposed to create a streetcar line between the center of Palma and the airport.
It is the third most important airport in Spain by passenger volume and the most profitable in the country, being only surpassed in traffic by Madrid-Barajas Airport in Madrid and Barcelona-El Prat Airport in Barcelona. It receives a large number of charter flights from Europe (especially Germany and the United Kingdom).
Air Berlin, the main airline operating at the airport, used the airport as a hub or connection center to link flights from Germany and Spain. During 2016, for economic reasons of the company and strong competition, it stopped using the Mallorcan airport as a hub for operations between the two countries by eliminating flights between Son Santjoan and the Iberian Peninsula, although maintaining flights from Germany.