The executive president of ANA Aeroportos acknowledges that there are serious problems with some subsystems in Portuguese airports, highlighting passport control by the Immigration Service, but he is the main person responsible for the cancellation of flights by several airlines due to the situation that it is lived in the last days, particularly in the Lisbon airport.
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Thierry Ligonnières assured that passport control has improved after contacts with partners that “have produced tangible results in recent weeks.” The manager was heard this Wednesday in the economy and public works commission where he was asked about the prospects for exiting the crisis in the sector. The answer, he said, lies more in the hands of the airlines. The executive president of the airport operator referred to the reduction in flight supply capacity decided by other European airports, but ruled out this scenario in Lisbon. “We think that it is not necessary in Lisbon” where, he argued, there is a better response capacity than in other infrastructures.
Thierry Ligonnières highlighted that we went from a situation where all the planes were on the ground to a very dynamic recovery. In 2021, “we had 40% less traffic and now we are at a level close to and even higher than that of 2019”, above the recovery projections made for the sector. And this recovery “surprised air transport players” who reduced staff during the crisis. This was not the case with ANA, assured the executive president, who maintained the number of employees. Portugal, he said, is the country that is leading the recovery of traffic at the moment in Europe and assures that there was a reinforcement of the workforce at the Lisbon airport, by about a quarter, to accompany the airport control process and relieving traffic pressure during the summer period describes it as challenging.
For the manager, the difficulties do not result mainly from the infrastructure, referring to the optimization carried out at the level of the security control subsystem. “We have seen that the circuits are working. The cancellations that we are seeing now are on the side of the airlines.” And if it is true that a large part of the cancellations recorded last weekend were due to the accident with a jet that closed the runway for an hour and a half on Friday, causing difficulties in the recovery of traffic. Now there are structural cancellations that result from problems in the organization and planning of resources by the airlines.
Thierry Ligonnière admitted that the known operational limitations of Lisbon airport, despite the improvements made in operational management, mean that the more fragile and less resistant structure in response to disturbing events. But he also stressed that “we are today more prepared than many European airports”, referring to the SEF problems that are being resolved and the efforts of the handling companies to hire more resources since November.
Portugal is the “country of airport specialists”. ANA only comments on a decided solution and not scenarios, but wants to collaborate
The non-executive president of ANA, José Luís Arnault, and the executive president, Thierry Ligonnière, were called to the Parliament’s economy and public works commission to deal with the problems at the Lisbon airport, given the latest disturbances experienced in the last week and that are felt in the main European infrastructures. José Luís Arnault began by saying that this is the issue that appears in the PSD request that requested the presence of the ANA and the only one for which they were prepared. But he ended up facing a lot of questions about the other topic of the moment: the controversy over the new airport decision.
The executive president of ANA defended that the ranking that classified Portela as the worst airport in the world does not make an objective evaluation and used outdated data from 2018. According to Thierry Ligonnières, this ranking results from a montage of the results of the quality of service and compensation paid for canceled and delayed flights. “It’s a cheap and recurring way of gaining notoriety among consumers at the cost of our reputation,” as revenue results from the success of their clients’ damage claims. Other than outdated data, no criteria are described and no reference is made to samples.
Is Lisbon airport the worst in the world? There is a ranking that says yes.
The director also contrasts with the evaluation of the quality of service carried out by the regulator, ANAC, which presents different results for the first quarter of this year.
Source: Observadora
