Hire & Flying in Palma, Majorca (Mallorca) at Son Sant Joan or Son Bonet Aerodromes

[BritishPPL]

Hi

Can anyone recommend any fixed wing flying clubs or schools with private hire facilities at either of the two airfields at Palma in Majorca, one of the Spanish Balearic Islands?

A quick bit of Googling tells me that Son Sant Joan to the east is the Palma de Mallorca International Airport, apparently Spain's 3rd busiest after Madrid and Barcelona! Son Bonet to the north-west is its forerunner until 1959, now GA only.

I'm going for a weekend there (tomorrow!) and fancy a hour's jolly around the island in a PA28 Warrier or Cessna 152/172. I'm a PPL but I'll just go dual to take some photos and save the expense of getting checked out.

Are there any particularly good island features to recommend seeing from the air?

[BritishPPL]

So far I've found (after looking for "escuela pilotos mallorca" / "pilot schools majorca"):


The Royal Aero Club de Baleares (http://www.racbaleares.es), based in the left hanger of this satellite view of Son Bonet airfield (http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=&layer=&ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&z=18&ll=39.602369,2.704745&spn=0.001872,0.003616). They have a couple of suitable PA28s and I've just e-mailed them for prices.
Aerotec (http://www.aerotec.es) - also at San Bonet and emailed
Panamedia (http://www.panamedia.org/Html/index_ing.htm) - also at San Bonet and emailed.

[flugzeug]

Hi,

I ve been flying in Mallorca for several years and I suggest you to try with RAC Baleares, their planes are quiet well and so is the maintenance. As you said in your post it is located in Son Bonet (LESB). You wont find anything to hire from LEPA. If it s not possible to hire a plane in the RACB, try with Panamedia, but it will be a bit more difficult since they use their planes for school flights. The prices are about 150E + instructor for the PA28 and 100E + instructor for the C152.

About recommendable features, definetely the North coast from ADX to POS,its quite awesome.I hope the almond trees are still blooming.

Hope that helped and have a good time there!

[BritishPPL]

Thanks for that. I agree, RACB's aircraft do look in good condition in the photos. I suppose €150 or £110 an hour is to be expected these days. I hope it includes the landing fee. I think I'll just go around the south west corner of the island to keep the flight down to an hour. It looks interesting on the Google satellite imagery - It'll depend how big the zone around Palma is of course. I'll check my e-mail in the morning when I get there - my hotel has WiFi in the lobby. This assumes the schools can understand my attempt at writing an email in Spanish though!!!!

Adios amigos

[Established Localiser]

I can never find Son Bonet :ugh:

Have to put my GPS in the car next time !!

EL

[BritishPPL]

Son Bonet and the main airport are both visible on this aerial view (http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=palma,+spain&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=13&ll=39.574866,2.745724&spn=0.059939,0.166512&t=h&om=1). Son Bonet is just next to "pont d´Inca" in the top left of the image, the main airport bottom-centre.

I´m here in sunny Majorca now - its about 20 degrees C. Unfortunately none of the flying schools or clubs have responded to my email. Maybe its the Spanish mañana mañana response!

Adios

[PNHE]

Hi. Just read your thread and want to try the same. Did you have any luck getting off the ground? I have had no responses from the clubs - just wondered if you visited them?

Thanks

[Capvermell]

Hi. Just read your thread and want to try the same. Did you have any luck getting off the ground? I have had no responses from the clubs - just wondered if you visited them?As one with a family apartment on the island and travelling there since as far back as 1969 I think the issue is that Mallorca is a bit of an oddity when it comes to general aviation.

For whatever bizarre historic reasons this large and busy mass tourism oriented island (75 miles across and 50 miles wide) has only the one serious airfield (Son San Juan/PMI) and that is so serious an airport that oddly small private aircraft are not tolerated. One understands why for a few weeks in July and August when the airport is nearly as busy as Heathrow but why does this continue in to the dark days of January of February when only a few hardy ex pats and villa owners fly in to the island and the airport is near deserted.

This leaves only Son Bonet, which is so run down, neglected and inadequately resourced that whatever flying resources it does have must I think been confined to the small freight operators and to local Mallorcans who are serious about getting a private pilot's licence. I imagine numerous British and German PPL tourists on holiday have the same idea as both of you in this thread and essentially Son Bonet just isn't set up to handle it. Compare all this with similarly sized Corsica, which has no less than four serious commercial airports, all of which would allow some general aviation and light aircraft as none of them are that busy, and also with Sardinia which has three commercial airports, at least two of which would have a lot of capacity for general aviation.

But on Mallorca there is only massive Son San Juan (horribly over extended 12 years ago and handling 25 million passengers per annum and now requiring enormous walks to get to many of the gates as two old terminals were linked together by a new feeder terminal in the middle and it all runs as just one terminal now) or iddly, tiddly oh so tiny Son Bonet (only about 50,000 passengers per annum!) and nothing else. The only other airport at all on the island is the flying boat facility up at Puerto Pollensa (entirely sea based with a ramp out of the sea to a single small hangar) only used by the military and by the Canadair's that fight the forest fires in the mountains

There is also a British operated helicopter school running out of Son Bonet so if any rotorheads are visiting the island and fancy a tour in a whirlie bird they might want to try Sloane Helicopters Mallorca - Welcome to Sloane Helicopters Mallorca (http://www.sloanemallorca.com) Their website certainly looks like they are lot more interested in walk up business from tourists than any of the Spanish fixed wing flying schools as they have a detailed hire price list and the whole thing is in English.

But basically if you fancy private pilot flying the Balearics for whatever reason do not have the tradition and Corsica in particular would be a far better bet.

[S-Works]

I seem to recall there is also a little grass airfield with a flying school not far from Son Bonet. On the few times I have flown into Son Bonet I have always found it quite active with training and Sloane Helicoptors seem to run a busy school there.

Last summer I based myself out of Son Bonet to fly to the other Islands. I flew in airways from the UK and was vectored into Son Bonet by the main airport controllers. Great fun and very accommodating.

I will see if I can find the telephone number of the local flight school and post it. It would also be worth calling Sloanes as the CFI is a Brit and having dealt with Sloanes here in the UK they were amazingly helpful with local contacts and knowledge.

[Capvermell]

I seem to recall there is also a little grass airfield with a flying school not far from Son Bonet. On the few times I have flown into Son Bonet I have always found it quite active with training and Sloane Helicoptors seem to run a busy school there.

I was actually going to post that I remember seeing gliders and a low flying plane roadside warning sign somewhere on the north side of what used to be the C-713 main road (it has now been renamed as the MA-something or other and turned in to a divided dual carriageway) between Palma and Manacor but this was at least 10 years ago. I would say it was somewhere to the north of the section of road between Montuiri and Villafranca. However I have tried googling in both English and Spanish including for the words mallorca, planeador (Spanish for glider) and aerodromo and aeropuerto and this didn't find me anything.

I think it probably was a grass glider field that just operated at weekends but I don't know if evolving EU safety laws or other factors have put it out of business. If it was still in existence now I would expect to find a mention somewhere on the web. Especially when Mallorca is such a popular tourist destination.

Extensive searching only gives me the following airports and airport codes on Mallorca and I can find absolutely nothing else at all on the web about this glider field.

Son San Juan - The Main Commercial Airport = PMI/LEPA/LESJ
Son Bonet - The General Aviation Airport = LESB
Pollensa - The Seaplane Airport = LEPO

Sloane Helicopters seem to be based at Son Bonet, according to their website, but obviously there is nothing to stop helicopters landing on any other old solid piece of ground that they feel like landing on.

[SwissFlying]

Hi,
does anybody know if it is possible to hire a N-registered aircraft on Mallorca?

[peterh337]

I don't know the answer to that, but you may be interested in knowing that that Palma LEPA has Customs but no Avgas, whereas Son Bonet LESB has Avgas but no Customs :)

N-reg rentals are very very rare around Europe, generally.

[Capvermell]

does anybody know if it is possible to hire a N-registered aircraft on Mallorca?Probably best to pay a visit to or make enquiries at Son Bonet airfield as if there are any they should be aware of them.

See Aeropuerto de Son Bonet - Aena Aeropuertos (http://www.aena-aeropuertos.es/csee/Satellite/Aeropuerto-Son-Bonet/es/) and Son Bonet Aerodrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_Bonet_Aerodrome)

Any reason why you want an N reg aircraft in Mallorca? I can only imagine it would be relevant for filming purposes but with CGI etc these days it ought to be fairly easy to alter the reg number from a Spanish one to US one after filming.

[Capvermell]

I don't know the answer to that, but you may be interested in knowing that that Palma LEPA has Customs but no Avgas, whereas Son Bonet LESB has Avgas but no Customs http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/smile.gif

I thought Customs would provide the necessary formalities at Son Bonet where required even though the majority of traffic in to the airport is of domestic origin.