Passenger Terminal World - January 2025
28 January 2025
Maurici Lucena Betriu, CEO of Aena, explores the airport operator’s plans to stay competitive, sustainable and technologically advanced
What has been your career journey to date?
I started my professional career as a consultant at a specialized economic analysis firm named Solchaga Recio & Asociados. Subsequently, in the Spanish public sector, I held the positions of general managing director of the Center for Technological and Industrial Development (CDTI) and executive vice president of Engineering Systems for the Defense of Spain (ISDEFE). I was also chairman of the Council of the European Space Agency (ESA), so the aeronautical sector was not unknown to me when I joined Aena a few years later.
In the private sector, at Banco Sabadell, I was director of wealth and prudential management and director of prudential regulation and public policy. I was also a member of the Parliament of Catalonia for three years.
In the academic field, I have been an associate professor in the Department of Economics at Carlos III University of Madrid. Finally, since July 2018, I have been chairman of the board of directors and CEO of Aena.
Can you tell us more about Aena’s recent significant investments and what drove them?
In a large airport infrastructure management company, investment cycles span multiple years. This is certainly the case for Aena, which is also a large airport network. This makes the process even more complex, especially considering the regulations that must be met in the planning, procurement and execution of major infrastructure works.
In our case, thanks to the extraordinary investment process undertaken in previous decades – which comprised more than €15bn [US$15.8bn] between 2001 and 2010 in nominal terms – we have sufficient capacity in our infrastructures to serve around 350 million passengers in the Spanish network.
Despite the fact that Spain has the second-largest number of international tourists in the world according to the World Economic Forum, our airports currently can handle the demand without any problem. However, we are approaching, at least in some of our airports, the capacity limits that our strict quality levels demand. For this reason, we are already working on the first steps to carry out infrastructure expansion projects in the coming years.
Ref: Pages: 75 to 80 of Passenger Terminal World January 2025 - Passenger Terminal Today - 28 January 2025
