“Portugal is leading the recovery of air traffic in Europe”, said Thierry Ligonnière.

“We went from a situation in which all the planes were on the ground, in 2020, to a situation of very dynamic traffic resumption. In some airports we are above 2019 levels and therefore this very rapid evolution of traffic, above the forecasts of the sector, ended up surprising some of the actors in air transport”.

The CEO of ANA acknowledged that there were “serious problems with some subsystems, one of which is border control, by the SEF”. But he stressed that “the work that has been done with the ministry and the national direction of SEF has produced very tangible results during the last few weeks”.

He defended that the cancellations that have existed at Humberto Delgado are mainly the responsibility of the airlines. “The difficulties that we have observed at Lisbon airport, they have nothing to do with the nature of the infrastructure, that is, with the issue of border control or gates installed”, said the official. “The cancellations that we are seeing now, the response is more on the airlines side, because the cancellations are decided by the airlines,” he added.