The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (Mitma) will proceed to the express award of a contract for the provision of air services in the inter-island connections of the Balearic Islands.
The award will be made immediately due to the lack of interest in continuing to operate these connections by the airlines that operated them to date, after the publication of the Order TMA / 247/2020 by which transport measures have been established to apply to the connections between the peninsula and the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands.
These services will consist of a daily round trip flight for each of the Palma de Mallorca-Mahón and Palma de Mallorca-Ibiza links, with a final price of € 60 each way (less than € 15 for the resident, thanks to the 75 % of existing grant).
At the moment, the Ministry is finalizing the file to be able to award these services through the emergency route, an award that is expected to be published in the BOE tomorrow.
Due to the rapid evolution of the public health emergency situation caused by COVID-19, the Government, through Royal Decree 463/2020, of March 14, declared a state of alarm throughout the national territory in order to face the health crisis.
In this framework, the Minister of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda issued on March 17 the Order TMA / 247/2020 establishing the transport measures to be applied to the connections between the peninsula and the Autonomous Community of the Balearic Islands, in order to protect people, property and places. In the air mode, flights to the islands were prohibited, except for a basic operation that would guarantee adequate connectivity conditions in the current situation.
Basic connectivity
Thus, the measures established, on the one hand, basic connectivity between the main destinations of the peninsula and the islands, links that, after making the notifications required by the aforementioned Order, the airlines Air Europa, Vueling and Iberia. On the other hand, the measures also contemplated the realization of inter-island flights to allow movements from Eivissa and Menorca to Palma.
In the inter-Balearic case, no airline company expressed in the term established by the Order its interest to continue operating said routes for the next few days.
Once this fact was known, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda began to work immediately to provide citizens with that basic connectivity, avoiding as far as possible the disruption of the service.
For this, the Order TMA / 254/2020, published today in BOE, by which instructions are issued in the field of road and air transport, enables the Director General of Civil Aviation to establish the conditions for the provision and direct award of regular air transport services on the routes of Palma from Mallorca-Mahón and Palma de Mallorca-Ibiza.
