Palma de Mallorca’s Son Sant Joan airport – Spain’s third-busiest for international leisure traffic – is facing a string of four partial strike days by Swissport ground-handling employees. The first stoppage on Tuesday, 28 July, caused what the CCOO union described as “numerous” delays to departures and baggage delivery. Further walk-outs are planned for 1, 4 and 8 August, with stoppages from 07:00–12:00 and 19:00–22:00. Swissport handles check-in, ramp and baggage services for more than 20 foreign carriers at Palma, including TUI, Condor, Air Canada, Etihad and TAP Air Portugal. Although Spain’s Ministry of Transport has imposed minimum-service obligations, early indications suggest turnaround times lengthened by up to 40 minutes during Tuesday’s action, leading some airlines to trim schedules or swap aircraft types to maintain rotation integrity. Workers are demanding an updated wage table in line with the sectoral ground-handling agreement and an end to what unions call “precarious” seasonal contracts. Swissport says talks are ongoing but notes that its Palma operation is still recovering financially from pandemic-era traffic losses and faces intense price competition from other handlers. Mallorca’s tourism lobby has urged both sides to reach a deal quickly, warning that cascading delays at the peak of the Balearic high season risk damaging the island’s reputation among tour operators and forcing airlines to redeploy capacity elsewhere in the Mediterranean. Travel-management companies are advising business travellers to allow extra connection time, use hand luggage where possible and monitor airline notifications closely. With Son Sant Joan expected to handle more than 180,000 passengers a day in early August, even limited stoppages can snarl airport flows. Companies with rotating engineering or sales teams covering Spain’s islands should consider rerouting via Ibiza or Barcelona, or switching to videoconferencing until labour peace returns.
Source: Europa Press
