Closing another busy summer season, President of the Portuguese Tourism Confederation, Francisco Calheiros, has shown that the undercurrent of pressure to resurrect the plan to transform Montijo air base into an overspill airport for Lisbon remains strong, even though it has been ostensibly ‘kicked into the long grass’ for multiple environmental and health reasons.

His reasoning, outlined at the PSD’s Summer University in Castelo de Vide, Portalegre, yesterday, was the time it will take to have the replacement option, in Alcochete, up and running.

“Let’s see what Alcochete has in store for us in 20… I have already lost count, as I don’t believe it (meaning, he doesn’t believe in the 2038 time-scale given). I hope that one day, common sense will prevail and we will return to Montijo,” he said – giving none of the perceived downsides that Montijo represents, not least the fact that it is close to a marshland, prone to flooding, which introduces the serious risk of bird-strikes with aircraft.

For Calheiros, as with all ‘business-related pressure’, the focus is on making money/ as much money as possible. Like many in the business community, Calheiros views Lisbon airport as “the main obstacle to the growth of tourism in Portugal”.

“Lisbon is completely clogged up and Alcochete will take ten years. If we had Montijo next to Lisbon (…) it is an airport that had already been negotiated with the concessionaire and was the only one that already had an environmental impact statement. It was a shame to let this fall through”, he told his audience.

The decision to choose Alcochete for Lisbon’s future airport was one of the first announced by Luís Montenegro, after taking office as prime minister of a PSD/CDS-PP executive, in May 2025, and following a study organised by the previous Socialist administration.

The Montijo option was never popular with people or municipalities in the area; environmentalists/ conservationists also rejected it out of hand, as did civil aviation authority ANAC.

The only plus in Montijo’s favour, really, has been that it is ‘close to Lisbon’ and requires little work to start bringing in throngs of aircraft.

Source material: LUSA