AFP, Lisbon :
A record number of passengers using Lisbon’s airport is proving a bittersweet achievement as daily delays and a lack of space to park planes threatens to strangle the goose laying golden eggs for Portugal’s economy.
Tourists flocking to Lisbon to soak up some sun and while away evenings listening to Fado music in the city’s bars has been one of the bright spots in Portugal’s economy, which was wracked by the eurozone debt crisis at the start of the decade.
But with Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado airport having already in 2016 passed its capacity forecasts for 2025, there are mounting concerns that without rapid investments it might soon act as a choke valve on the motor of Portugal’s economy.
In 2017, the airport set a new record of 26.7 million passengers, a 66 percent increase over four years. And traffic is up another 11 percent over the first eight months of this year.
The Portuguese government, national airline TAP and the tourism sector all agree: construction of a second airport for the capital needs to get underway.
The plan under discussion is to convert Montijo airbase on the opposite side of the Tagus river from Lisbon into a civil airport. As a stop-gap measure, a little-used secondary runway at the current airport, located in the city’s northern suburbs, will be closed to make space to park planes.
The Montijo project, which would take overall capacity to 50 million passengers per year, has been the subject of discussions since February last year between the government and ANA, the operator of 10 Portuguese airports that is owned by French construction and management firm Vinci.
