Lisbon airport celebrates 75 years

Lisbon airport surpassed the 22 million passengers mark for the first time in its history in 2016, reflecting year-on-year growth of 11.7%. In the last four years, Lisbon airport grew 7.2 million passengers, while in the previous eight years the increase was 4.6 million.
 
The continuous passenger records that have been achieved year after year have resulted in a huge contribution to the city of Lisbon, which also lives the best tourist years ever, at a time when the tourism sector is one of the main pillars of the economic development. In Lisbon this fact is strongly linked to the performance of Lisbon airport, since 95% of tourists arrive in the Portuguese capital by plane.
 
In order to leverage the exponential traffic growth that has been registered, VINCI Airports has been investing continuously in improvements in infrastructure, which have allowed to generate efficiencies with the consequent capacity increases.
 
In a short future, more investments have already been planned, which should be available as early as the IATA summer of 2018 (shipping channels for all Schengen ports, creation of two new non-Schengen boarding gates, renovation of the check-in area…). These investments anticipate the need for capacity in the different airport systems that will result from the availability of more airspace by the responsible entities.

 
In his speech, Nicolas Notebaert, President of VINCI Airports and CEO of VINCI Concessions, said that "At 75 years old, Lisbon airport mighty already have a long history but I believe that it is just at the beginning of unlocking its impressive potential.” He also reminded VINCI Airports’ main commitments when taking over the operations of ANA-Aeroportos de Portugal: contribute to the development of the economy of Portugal through traffic growth and optimize the use of Lisbon airport by proposing the necessary investments in order to amplify traffic growth.