Airports misery continues with flights cancelled and passenger complaints up15%

Tourists and business travellers alike are facing summer months of misery at some of Portugal’s airports over baggage handling strikes overseas and lack of capacity at Lisbon’s international airport.

The Government is in contact with the ANAC (National Civil Aviation Authority) and ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal, the latter which manages Portugal’s airports for the Vinci group, to see how conditions can be improved for passengers.
Portugal’s infrastructure minister, Pedro Nuno Santos in reply to a letter from Deco (the consumers rights watchdog), states that it is “aware and concerned with the turbulence that has affected the airports”.
But the minister noted that this “turbulence” has affected all European airports with knock-on effects for Portuguese airports”, and reminded that since June it has been “working with a contingency group created by ANAC and which involves all entities-critics at national airports such as airlines, handling companies and ANA with the goal of pin-pointing measures to be taken to improve the operation”.
It comes as passenger complaints to ANAC were up 15% (+886) on 2019 for the first six months of this year to 6,782.
Between Monday and yesterday ANA expected 60 cancelled flights at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado after over 100 flights had been cancelled over the weekend.
And there was no hopeful words from the CEO of national carrier TAP, Christine Ourmières-Widener, who in a letter addressed to customers published on the company’s website warned that the situation could last in the coming weeks.