King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia open the new Terminal Three at Málaga Airport

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia open the new Terminal Three at Málaga Airport
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By h.b. - Mar 15, 2010 - 7:42 PM
The terminal opens to the public on Tuesday, but British fliers lose out

King Juan Carlos makes his speech to 500 invited dignatories - EFE

King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia on Monday officially opened the new Terminal Three at Málaga airport. Passengers will start to use the new facility from Tuesday, first flight destination Barcelona leaves at 0650, with the wall which separates T3 from T2 being knocked down overnight.

The Monarch congratulated all who had made the project possible and said the terminal would be a great advance towards making Málaga and Andalucía more dynamic. He said the modernisation should ‘fill us with pride as if offers the possibility for better mobility and connections both national and international’.

Don Juan Carlos described the

Photo - AENA

architecture as ‘agile, luminous and transparent’ and that, linked to advanced technology, would allow economic and commercial activity to be stimulated, especially in the tourism sector.
He congratulated the builders and the architect, and had obviously done his homework, describing Málaga airport as the oldest in Spain still to be on its original site.

The King also took the opportunity of being in Málaga to speak of the flooding seen across Andalucía this winter and of those affected by the storms. He described them as storms without precedent, and noted the grand damage they had done to homes, infrastructures and agriculture. He expressed his solidarity with those affected and his full support, hoping that normality would be resumed as soon as possible.

Minister for Development, José Blanco, paid tribute to his predecessor’s work on the project. Magdalena Álvarez is a Malagueña, and he noted how with the new terminal, new motorway, AVE high speed train, and the project for the port, the city of Málaga was bringing the world ever closer. He also noted the 410 million € his department has invested in Málaga.

The new terminal cost more than 300 million €, and has a new transport hub designed to make it easy for people to get to taxis, buses, privat

Photo - AENA

e or hire cars and the new train station which links to Málaga and Fuengirola, although the train station won’t be ready until the end of the year.

The new terminal has doubled the capacity of the airport from 4,500 passengers an hour to 9,000, has 180 check-in desks, 48 boarding gates, 11.000 square metres of shops, can handle 14,000 suitcases an hour, and offers 3,700 parking places.

However many of the thousands of British tourists who travel to Málaga will not see or use the new facilities, as most of the low cost airlines will still use the old Terminal Two. The UK flights suffer from a decision to take flights from the Shengen countries to the new terminal.

See a list of which airline uses which terminal here

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