History of Aviation in Mallorca and Son Bonet Aerodrome.
An Aviatik was the first aircraft to land in Mallorca. Piloted by a Catalan,
Manuel Colmer, it reached Son Bonet on 25 February 1921 where he offered flights
lasting one quarter of an hour for four pesetas (a newspaper cost five
centimes at that time), which were very popular. The first plane to be
seen in Mallorca was at an exhibition at the old hippodrome Son Maciā
in Pont dInca. Brought to the Island by boat by a French aviator, Julien
Mamet, in the summer of 1910, his Bleriot XI rose 200 metres in the air.
On the second day, a gust of wind blew the aircraft into an olive tree and,
losing control he fell from it, happily landing safely in a bale of wheat.
Son Bonet was equipped as a customs airport in May 1946 and officially
opened to domestic and international traffic in July. It had two natural
ground runways, a small control tower with land/air communications and a
radiogoniometer. With the arrival of the tourist boom and the impossibility of
expanding the airport to cope with it, commercial traffic transferred to
Son San Juan Airport in 1959.