New Lisbon Airport (Portuguese: Novo Aeroporto de Lisboa, NAL) is the currently planned site for construction of a new Lisbon Airport. It was originally scheduled to replace or complement the current Portela Airport by the year 2017. Following a series of delays, in 2018 the government announced a revival of the project. The airport is anticipated to be complete by 2022.
After years of debate and public consultation whether Rio Frio or Ota would be the place to build a new Lisbon airport, a new location was proposed in Alcochete and won as it was more accessible given the good infrastructure nearby, such as the Vasco da Gama Bridge. The location of Alcochete as the construction site of the future Lisbon Airport was confirmed by the Portuguese Government on 8 May 2008.[1] The estimated cost for the project is €3 billion (approximately US$4.5 billion). Construction started in late 2010 but, in May 2010, forced by the financial crisis, Prime Minister José Sócrates put the project on hold.[2]
The green field facility envisaged in the 2000s was to have four runways, and was expected to service over 50 million passengers annually.[3]
After the termination of the new airport project a plan was later put forward to keep the existing airport in service but also to convert an existing Naval Air Base in Montijo into a facility for low cost carriers. [4]
In November 2018, at an IATA congress in Madrid, Pedro Marques, Minister of Planning and Infrastructure, stated that Montijo airport would start operating by 2022.[5] In 31 October 2019, the IATA as declaring that operations begins in 2021 for Low Cost Airlines.
From 2021 the Airlines to be launch flights is:
| Airlines | Destinations |
|---|---|
| Ryanair | Alicante, Barcelona, Beauvais, Brest, Bremen, Brive, Bergamo, Berlin–Schönefeld, Birmingham, Bologna, Bordeaux, Bristol, Brussels, Budapest, Cagliari, Châlons-Vatry, Charleroi, Carcassonne, Clermont-Ferrand, Cologne/Bonn, Dole, Dortmund, Dublin, Eindhoven, Faro, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Hamburg, Karlsruhe/Baden-Baden, Krakow, Liverpool, London–Luton, London–Stansted, London–Southend, Lourdes/Tarbes, Luxembourg, Madrid, Malaga, Malta, Manchester, Marrakech, Marseille, Memmingen, Milan–Malpensa, Nuremberg, Ponta Delgada, Rome–Ciampino, Seville, Tenerife–South, Terceira, Toulouse, Tours, Treviso, Valencia, Weeze Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Gran Canaria, La Rochelle, Lille, Naples, Palma de Mallorca, Strasbourg, Warsaw–Modlin (to be begins in 2021) |