Palma de Mallorca Airport (Catalan: Aeroport de Palma de Mallorca, Spanish: Aeropuerto de Palma de Mallorca; IATA: PMI, ICAO: LEPA; also known as Son Sant Joan Airport or Aeroport de Son Sant Joan) is an international airport located 8 km (5.0 mi) east of Palma, Majorca, Spain, adjacent to the village of Can Pastilla. The airport on the Balearic Islands is Spain’s third largest airport after Madrid–Barajas and Barcelona-El Prat. Palma de Mallorca was used by 27.9 million passengers in 2017. The airport is the main base for the Spanish carrier Air Europa and also a focus airport for Ryanair, EasyJet, Vueling and Jet2.com. The airport shares runways with the nearby Son Sant Joan Air Force Base, operated by the Spanish Air Force.
Following a decline in passenger numbers at the airport following the September 11 attacks in 2001, numbers rose steadily between 2002 and 2007 when traffic peaked at 23.2 million passengers, however from 2007 there has been a decline in passenger numbers with 21.1 million using the airport in 2010. Today, Palma de Mallorca airport carries over 29.7 million passengers to their destinations, with 178,253 aircraft movements, mostly to mainland Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom.
In November 2015, Air Berlin (1978 – 2017) announced that it would shut down its hub operations at the airport which it had maintained for over ten years. All seven domestic connection routes to the mainland – such as flights to Valencia, Bilbao and Sevilla – as well as the route to Faro in Portugal ceased during spring 2016.
During the Summer months the dual-runway airport handles as many movements as London–Gatwick, and on the busiest day of the week as much as 1,100 movements – almost as many as London–Heathrow, the busiest in Europe. According to the operational data provided by AENA, the airport can handle 66 movements per hour or during a 24-hour operational period, almost 1,600 aircraft movements.
