ANA criticises new airport calculations from Independent Technical Commission

The company that operates Portugal’s airports, ANA – Aeroportos de Portugal, says it is “extremely concerned” at suppositions made by the Independent Technical Commission (CTI) appointed by the government to weigh up the pros and cons of each possible site for Lisbon’s new international airport.

ANA says it is worried about forecasts for medium and long-term air traffic, the timeline to build “strategic options” and the methods used to evaluate the economics of each solution.
The CTI is expected to inform the government that an option to build a new airport on the South bank of the Tagus river at Alcochete is the best on a number of indicators. However, ANA has argued for months that Montijo, also on the South bank, would be a better choice. The Commission, however, says it is “unviable”.
According to the news source Negócios, which was given access to a document from ANA, ANA states that there is a “significant risk of the Commission’s air traffic projections being incorrect and overoptimistic”.
The Commission, led by Rosário Partidário, has estimated anywhere between 66 to 108 million passengers by 2050 or 2 to 3.5 times on current air traffic, and 1.5 to 2 times more than estimates from respected International entities that have suggested 40 to 52 million passengers in 2050.
ANA believes that the CTI did not take into account a number of limitations and fundamental macro trends in airport demand such as the potential saturation of tourism capacity in Lisbon, competition from other European hubs, and expected demographic development in Europe and Portugal, and stresses that these optimistic air traffic projections from the CTI, which recommend Alcochete, ignore Strategic Options on capacity limitations, which ANA says have erroneously concluded that Montijo would see capacity exhausted by 2038.