Complete Detail at Palma de Mallorca Airport (Son Sant Joan) (LEPA)

Why schedule a complete detail at Palma de Mallorca Airport?

Palma sits at the centre of Mediterranean charter operations, and aircraft based here through the summer accumulate salt haze, pollen, dust from the Sahara and the residue of dozens of quick turnarounds on hot aprons. A complete detail strips that history away: paint is decontaminated with a clay bar to lift embedded contamination the wash mitt cannot reach, then polished in a single stage to restore gloss and prepare the surface for a six-month hydrophobic seal. Brightwork around the cheat line, nacelles and leading edges is polished separately. Inside, every cabin surface is cleaned to OEM specification, lavatories are stripped and re-sealed, and the flight deck is detailed around avionics with no-touch protocols. The final step is disinfection of all soft and hard surfaces.

The process takes between two and five days depending on aircraft size, the condition of the paint and whether the belly and gear bays are included in the scope. Most operators schedule the work in the hangar during an off-charter window in late autumn or early spring, or immediately before a pre-buy inspection when presentation drives value. You receive a photographic report documenting the condition before and after, useful for your own records or for a prospective buyer's team.

What changes at Palma de Mallorca Airport (Son Sant Joan) between summer and winter?

Palma de Mallorca Airport operates H24 without curfew and is the only airport in the Balearics to do so, which matters when you are trying to reposition an aircraft into the hangar late in the evening or collect it early before a morning charter leg. The field sits at 27 feet elevation, eight kilometres east of Palma city centre, with two runways: 06L/24R at 3,270 metres and 06R/24L at 3,000 metres. Three handling agents are present at the airport and operate from the General Aviation Terminal on the east side; all can arrange hangar space and airside escort for the detailing crew.

The airport is slot-coordinated year-round—Level 3 in IATA terms—and requests are handled in H36 mode, the same real-time process used at Barcelona. Between May and October the ramp is under seasonal pressure: fire category can be raised to 9 on request, and the AIP notes special weekend arrangements for State flights during that window. For a multi-day detail, this means your handler will want the slot series filed well in advance and will expect the aircraft to be on stand or in the hangar promptly so the next arrival is not delayed. Outside the summer peak, hangar availability improves and the coordination is less fraught, though the slot requirement does not disappear.

How does the handler coordinate a multi-day detail at Palma?

The handler files the PPR, secures the slot series if the aircraft will move on and off stand, arranges the hangar booking and issues the airside pass for the detailing crew. Because Palma is coordinated, every movement—whether from the ramp into the hangar or from the hangar back to the stand—requires a slot, and the handler will ask for a realistic estimate of when the aircraft will be ready to reposition. If the detail runs over by a day, the slot series may need to be amended, and that is easier to manage outside the summer months.

The crew arrives on the morning of the first day, meets the handler's ramp coordinator and is escorted airside to the aircraft. If the work is being done in the hangar, the aircraft is towed in once GPU and any pre-move inspections are complete. The handler expects the detailing crew to respect the same safety and security protocols as their own staff: high-visibility clothing, radio contact if working on the apron, and no unsupervised access to the aircraft or the ramp. At the end of each day, the hangar is secured or the aircraft is returned to the stand, and the handler updates the tech log if requested. On the final day, the crew completes a walk-around with the captain or the chief pilot, hands over the photographic report and clears airside.

What does a complete detail include that a dry wash and cabin clean do not?

A dry wash removes surface dirt and applies a polymer sealant; a full interior detail cleans the cabin and flight deck to OEM standards. A complete detail adds three steps that restore rather than maintain: paint decontamination, polish and disinfection. Decontamination uses a clay bar or a chemical process to lift contamination bonded to the paint—tree sap, industrial fallout, mineral deposits from hard water, the brown haze that accumulates on white fuselages flying coastal routes in summer. Once the surface is clean at a microscopic level, a single-stage polish is applied by machine to restore gloss and remove light oxidation. The result is a surface that looks sharper under ramp lights and in client photographs, and that sheds water for months afterward.

Brightwork around the nacelles, the leading edges of the wings and the cheat line is polished separately because these areas oxidise faster and require a different compound. Inside, the disinfection step uses a hospital-grade agent applied to all surfaces—seats, sidewalls, galley, lavatories, cockpit panels—and is the final task before the aircraft is released. The photographic report documents the condition at each stage, which is useful for your own maintenance records and essential if the aircraft is about to be surveyed by a buyer's team.

When should an operator schedule a complete detail at Palma?

Most operators schedule a complete detail once or twice a year: once in late autumn after the summer charter season, and again in early spring if the aircraft has spent the winter flying in de-icing conditions or across regions with poor water quality. The service is also scheduled immediately before a pre-buy inspection or an aircraft sale, when presentation has a direct effect on the surveyor's report and the buyer's confidence. If the aircraft is about to enter a new charter certificate or a management contract, a complete detail resets the baseline and makes it easier to demonstrate that the aircraft has been maintained to a high standard.

At Palma, the best windows are late October through March, when hangar availability is better and the slot coordination is less congested. If the aircraft is based here through the summer and flies frequent short legs to Ibiza, Nice, Olbia and the Italian coast, the paint will have accumulated months of salt spray, and a complete detail in November will protect the finish through the winter. For aircraft arriving from northern Europe after a season of de-icing, the detail removes the residue of Type I and Type IV fluid from the belly and the gear bays, areas that are often missed during a routine wash.

What happens if the detail takes longer than the slot series allows?

If the aircraft is due to depart on a specific day and the detail is not finished—perhaps because the paint required more correction than expected, or because a delay in hangar access pushed the start back by a day—the handler will need to amend the outbound slot. At a coordinated airport like Palma, that amendment is not automatic: the new slot is subject to availability, and during the summer months or around a weekend with State-flight arrangements, the next available departure may be several hours later than planned. The earlier the handler is told, the more options they have.

This is why the initial estimate matters. A super-midsize jet in good condition will take two full days; an ultra-long-range aircraft with tired paint and a request to include the belly and gear bays may take four or five. The crew will give a realistic timeline after the first walk-around, and if it becomes clear that the work will overrun, the handler is notified immediately so they can file the amendment and keep the aircraft legal. The cost of the amendment—if any—and any additional hangar fees are settled between you and the handler; the detailing crew's concern is to finish the work properly and leave the aircraft in a condition that justifies the time spent.