Government aims for new airport to start operating in 2022
The new Montijo airport should be fully operational by 2022, the Minister for Planning and Infrastructures said this Tuesday. This airport comes to answer to the increase of 80% in air traffic.
Portugal’s minister for planning and infrastructure, Pedro Marques, said on Tuesday that the government aims for the country’s new additional airport to start operating in 2022.
Plans for the new airport in Montijo, south of the Tagus river, around 40km from the capital’s city centre, came following an 80% increase of air traffic at Lisbon airport in the past five years.
Pedro Marques was speaking at a congress of the International Association for Air Transport(IATA) in Madrid, Spain, and said the new airport would help deal with the increase in air traffic.
The beginning of works to modify the current air force base for the New Lisbon Airport is expected for 2019, but Marques said it depended on negotiations currently underway with airport operator ANA as well as on a study by the Portuguese Environment Agency on its environmental impact.
In October this year, ANA’s agreement memo with the government had already announced that the airport should start functioning in 2022, and according to the minister for infrastructures, the solution for complementing Lisbon’s airport would not be limited to the construction of Montijo’s airport, stating that “new options for complementing this airport will soon be announced”.
LUSA/ECO
