Works at Lisbon airport start in October

 In ANA - Aeroportos de Portugal, Aviation, Infrastructure, New Airport, News

Extension and improvement works at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado International Airport are scheduled to start in October.

This is according to the Minister of Infrastructures and Housing, Miguel Pinto Luz, who informed Portuguese deputies who sit on the Committee for Economy, Public Works and Housing.

“It is not sustainable to continue having the dreadful services that we have at that airport,” he said.

In May, the Government had already warned the concession company that runs Portugal’s airports, ANA Aeroportos, that it is contractually obliged to improve Portela airport. This is because Lisbon airport will have to operate until the beginning of the next decade, when Luís de Camões Airport is estimated to be operational and ready to receive flights.

The government had already declared that Lisbon was “operationally congested” and needed to find a short term answer to growing demand, and that only works would improve the existing airport serving the capital.

The big question is, however, why after many tens of millions of euros spent on upgrading and improving the airport over the past 20 years is the government closing down the airport at all, instead of retaining it as a secondary airport for short haul, low-cost and internal flights? If any of our readers have solid justifiable answers, Essential Business would like to know.

As to the new airport, the minister said that ANA had until December to present an initial high-level assumptions report regarding the development of airport capacity for Lisbon.