At the start of the week, the Portuguese Civil Aviation Authority (ANAC) said refuse an assessment feasibility study of a development plan for a second airport for the Lisbon region. The Civil Aviation Authority justified its decision by the lack of consensus among the municipalities affected by the construction of the future hub. Rejected by many of them, the infrastructure has little hope of being reactivated in the short term.
The project had already over 12 years and was based on the conversion of the Montijo air base on the other side of the Tagus river. This would have become a civilian airport capable of meeting Lisbon's air traffic needs.
The current airport has a theoretical capacity about 25 million passengers. But with exponential growth since Vinci took over the Portuguese airports in 2013, traffic has almost doubled since that date. While Lisbon was expecting 16 million passengers in 2013the platform in the Portuguese capital listed 31.7 million in 2019. Last year, however, covid brought traffic to a sudden halt, with a fall of more than 70%. Lisbon will only have welcomed 9.26 million passengers in 2020. It is expected to handle between 10 and 11 million passengers by 2021.
A postponement for Montijo?
Although the urgency of building an airport has receded since the Covid crisis, the decision will have long-term consequences. In 2019, the airport authority ANA, a subsidiary of Vinci, signed a plan with the Portuguese government to develop airport capacity.. It amounted to 1.15 billion in investments. At the time, the budget was split between €650 million for the first phase of expansion at Lisbon's current airport. And another €500 million for the new Montijo hub.
Vinci's initial plan was to turn it into an airport mainly for the point-to-point traffic. In other words, most of the low-cost traffic expected to be handled at Montijo by 2022. In the long term, Montijo would have been able to handle up to 50 million passengers.
A project that has now been frozen. However, it is likely that the authorities will bring it out of the wardrobe as soon as traffic picks up again. Probably after 2025...
