Thursday 23 July 2015

Spain: massive "Ghost Airport" cost €1bn - to be sold for €10,000?

Airport sale - Spain - Ciudad Real

A "ghost airport" that has become a notorious symbol of Spanish hubris in the boom years, could be sold to Chinese investors for just €10,000, despite having cost €1bn to build. The private airport, in Ciudad Real, was conceived as an alternative to Madrid’s airport – despite being 146 miles away – and a way to attract tourists to the region. Originally named Don Quixote Airport, after Cervantes’s delusional hero, it was designed to handle ten million passengers a year, and has a runway long enough to land the Airbus A380. But visitors didn’t materialise in anything like that number (33,000 passed through it in 2010) and it went bankrupt after just four years, in 2012. The regional authorities had hoped to sell it at auction for €80m, but received just the one, €10,000, bid. They have extended the deadline until September, in the hope of getting a higher offer.


Source: The Week

More detail on the Airport here

 

 

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