On Thursday, Aena issued a statement: "The airport, given the bad practice among many drivers who stop before entering the arrivals express car park and generate a danger for traffic, decided for safety reasons to install a barrier to eliminate this dangerous practice. It is important to bear in mind that Aena does not have the power to penalise when bad practice occurs. What it does is to notify the local police, as it is the competent authority."
Although it has been established that there isn't a service agreement between the airport's management and the town hall to pay for police presence, the town hall says that "the local police go to the airport on a daily basis, especially to control taxis and loading/unloading".
"For Easter, a service instruction was issued for the motorised transit unit to pass each day at different times, as was done. Aena is responsible for surveillance of the parking and it does so with the contracted security service. The police serve the entire city and cannot have a permanent unit. For this reason, Aena has direct contact to request the presence of the local police at times of urgent need. Over Easter, it did not request this."
The town hall meanwhile continues to argue that there should be thirty minutes free parking at the arrivals express car park (which has 84 spaces) rather than fifteen. "This would be the solution to the problem."
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@Lisa its not about parking which is for tourists and occasional one time users. Its about waiting, every day, to pick up the commuting other half. Morgan Williams is correct, that is the way to do it. When something works somewhere else why does it take so long for the idea to filter down to where its needed.
I always tell the people I'm picking up to call/message me once they're through passport controls else off the plane depending on where they're arriving from. Only then do I think about leaving to go pick them up. If they need to wait for me for 5-15 mins or so, so be it. While I understand that some are doing their pickup from much further away than I so they need to leave before actual arrival time. But what I don't get is why people need to wait in their cars actually at the airport. Its not like there aren't a whole pile of places that are like 5 mins from the airport they can stop and wait that doesn't block the traffic. Its not like they're not waiting for that "I'm here" message from the ones arriving anyway.
Realistically, Palma airport is seriously cheap for parking. But they need to stop the congestion. So - allow 5 mins for drop off. Use a barrier further back with no possible parking to control this. All pick ups - charge. It’s super cheap and very reasonable in the big car park. Simples. Im not getting what the argument is about.
15 minutes or 30.. not sure if it makes much difference. People are too cheap to pay for any parking, hence the chaos - see in Palma also. This rogue parking behavior on a road clearly meant to drive on… issue tickets and soon the problem will disappear as quickly as it surfaced.
in the US, airports have what's called a "cell phone" parking lot. 30 minutes free parking, but vehicle must be attended. The way it works is that when the party they're waiting to pick up is ready to exit the airport, they call or message the person waiting for them, who then drives to a defined pick up point, and picks them up. This seems like it would make sense here too. It seems like a very simple solution.