Lisbon Airport Might Begin Its Works by the End of 2023
According to the source, the airport is making these changes in efforts of efficiency rather than capacity, and it is expected to improve operating flights at this airport, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.
“The project for this first phase of the expansion of Lisbon airport — which is not a capacity expansion, because that involves environmental licensing — […] puts on the table the feasibility of increasing capacity at Lisbon airport,” the executive chairman of ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal, Thierry Ligonnière noted.
He also noted that an investment of €200 to €300 million could make these changes happen by the end of 2023, making these comments during the 47th National Congress of the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT), held in Ponta Delgada, Azores.
The CEO also pointed out that these works are expected to bring a slightly higher operational performance and potentially more traffic capacity.
Ligonnière highlighted that much work has already been completed at the level of an execution project, and now there will be consultations with users, authorisations by the regulator, as well as ANAC and an assessment by the grantor.
“Lisbon airport in its current capacity sometimes has difficulties because there are irregularities, there are delays, there are cancellations. For the airport to work well – to create capacity when there is no capacity, to do it in terms of the infrastructure itself – has to be through operational performance,” he said.
In September, the Infrastructure Minister, Pedro Nuno Santos Said that Humberto Delgado Airport needed work immediately in order to increase its fluidity, keeping in mind that the new airport would take time.
This initiative indicates the investment and changing of the bases of the concession with Vinci group-owned ANA. He also stressed that within this framework, it is possible to reach an amount for this investment while working with an understanding from the companies.
Regarding this negotiation with ANA, the parties involved are concerned with works done at Humberto Delgado airport since the new infrastructure doesn’t have a definite infrastructure yet.
The new expansion allows extending Terminal 1 to the South with more than ten boarding gates, which enables travellers to board and disembark through the telescopic bridges.
According to the official site of the Lisbon Airport, it has operated 16,055 flights as of November 2022, with 46 destinations, 294 routes and nearly 54 airlines. The highest number of flights to Lisbon was recorded in October – 23,700 of those, surpassing even the pre-pandemic levels.
The same source shows that over 29 million passengers used Lisbon Airport in 2018, which represents an almost nine per cent increase compared to the previous year. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, which includes 2020 and 2021, the number of passengers as well as flights decreased significantly in this airport.
More specifically, from a total of 13,600 flights that were operated in March of 2020, those dropped to 2,210 in the following month, which corresponds to the introduction of travel-related restrictions. This represents a sharp decline of 83.75 per cent in the number of flights operated.
A similar pattern was noticed at the same time the following year (April 2021), when merely 2,310 flights were operated at this airport, while in 2022, 17,000 flights were recorded, only 1,100 fewer flights than in pre-pandemic levels.
