Spanish 'ghost airport' up for auction

Ok guys, let's all chip in here. Three words: airport theme park! Roller coasters, shows, tons of aircraft displays etc. Runway is a drag strip for racing. Break out your check books folks!

http://flightaware.com/squawks/view/1/1_year/new/38736/Spanish%20%27ghost%20airport%27%20up%20for%20auction

An oversized airport sitting unused or underused.

Hmmmm....
Reminds me of another newly built large international airport out in the desert far from the downtown of the city the airport is purported to serve... Al Maktoum

The way they are building large airports all over the world, this may be the first of many airports to be built, be lightly used, to be closed, and to be auctioned for pennies on the dollar* and then brought back to life at a level of extravagance much lower than originally planned.

* not sure how they'll deal with the empty buildings, empty airports and empty cities in communist China, where the government directed all that investment in advance and property rights are of a more ephemeral nature.

A wonderful solution for the major airfrieght carriers to join forces and create a cargo hub for Europe and if 150 million currency unit of value, what could be better?

Maybe the likes of Ryanair could chip in and use it as it's western european hub as well solvings it's frequent fallouts with the airport authorities over charges.....if they part own the airfield they can do as they please.

This is just one of numerous public and private works built in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s when Spain went beserk: the super fast trainS to small towns with little traffic to justify, hundreds of thousands of apartments all over, wind mills to generate poWer at three time the cost of termal and hydro plants, you name it. When all these bubbles burst the European Union (i.e. Germany) had to bail them out to the tune of seveRal billion Euros. But theY le are recovering, until the next round of runaway crazy projects.

A country plagued with monetary crisis, planning such a sale !
Such a thing will be worth following closely.

Top Gear UK filmed an episode there. (Season 20 Episode 3)

Josh! I'm in. Put me down for $20

(Duplicate Squawk Submitted)

Spanish 'Ghost Airport' Goes On the Block

Spanish airport costing up to a reported $1.5 billion, little used.

Starting price? $150 million.

If that sounds improbable, you haven't been keeping up with the fallout from Spain's burst property bubble.

The fire sale of the country's first private international airport has become a powerful symbol of the economic downturn triggered by that implosion.

With a 4,400-meter-long runway, Europe's longest, on which the world's largest airliner, the Airbus 380, can land, Ciudad Real International Airport sounds as if it has quite a lot going for it.

Accepting bids from this week until December 27, the five-year-old facility 200 kilometers south of Madrid also has a passenger capacity of 10 million people a year and, something rare for an airport, star quality.


http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/10/travel/spanish-ghost-airport/index.html?hpt=tr_c2