If this summer was complicated at Lisbon airport, next summer will also be “challenging” and should bring new interruptions in service, admitted the executive president of TAP, who pointed to the delay in infrastructure improvement works.

Christine Ourmières-Widener admitted that she was “less optimistic” than the ANA’s non-executive chairman. José Luís Arnaut revealed the expectation that next year there will be an improvement in the operating conditions of the Humberto Delgado airport. Although the improvement works that the company is awaiting authorization to carry out, they will take three years to complete.

ANA President says that “Minister Leão” was a blocking force that delayed improvement works in Portela

The two directors spoke this Tuesday afternoon in a panel at the VI Portuguese Tourism Summit dedicated to mobility, but where the process of the new Lisbon airport was the strong topic, which had already marked the morning’s work.

The head of TAP admitted that in 2023 there may be improvements, compared to a very complicated 2022 in several European airports, marked by thousands of canceled flights and that in Portugal there were still disturbances by the Immigration and Border Service. But it will continue to be a “great challenge” year in terms of disruptions that may come from Lisbon airport or elsewhere. This is because, underlined Christine Widener, the “infrastructure does not change in a year” and that TAP is “in a critical phase of the restructuring process” and that it will be even more critical without the new airport. The carrier hopes to resume the level of traffic it had before the pandemic next year.

TAP, guaranteed the manager, will be better prepared to manage these interruptions that affected the company’s operation. In August alone, 15 flights were canceled and the company’s president did not rule out scenarios of greater disruption, given the lack of capacity of various services at European airports.

According to José Luís Arnaut, the works to improve Portela’s operating conditions will take about three years because they must be staggered to avoid major negative impacts on the operation of companies and passenger service.

Lisbon’s biggest competitor? The “greatest threat is next door”

Regarding the option for the new airport, Christine Ourmières-Widener defends the need for a solution with good connectivity with other airports, given the focus of the model on a hub from Lisbon. And she recognizes that Spanish airports are Lisbon’s biggest competitor because it is the closest, but also because TAP is the largest operator of flights between Europe and Brazil and Spain is strongly committed to connections with Latin America. The biggest “threat is next door. Madrid airport is a very efficient machine”.