The open lecture ‘Assessment of Strategic Options to increase Airport Capacity in the Lisbon Region’ took place on 17 October, at Técnico – Alameda campus, far from the tensions and public debate that have accompanied the ‘new Lisbon airport’ for 55 years and two days after the 82nd anniversary of Portela Airport.
The open lecture by Maria do Rosário Partidário revealed the decision-making process behind the location of Lisbon’s new airport. The event took place as part of the Strategic Environmental Assessment curricular unit of the Master’s Programme in Environmental Engineering and the Master’s Programme in Engineering and Management of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
Designing a new airport for the Lisbon region was the aim of the New Lisbon Airport Cabinet (GNAL), created in 1969, which already included the name of the future airport – Luís de Camões. The Independent Technical Commission, formed in 2022 and led by Maria do Rosário Partidário, a professor at Técnico and a researcher at the Centre for Innovation in Territory, Urbanism and Architecture (CiTUA), was responsible for recommending the solution that is expected to be implemented: Alcochete.
This was the third time Professor Maria do Rosário Partidário was involved in studies to determine the location of a new airport. There were 18 possible sites being considered, several of which were on the south bank, to address a problem that arose at Portela Airport during its second year of operation, when the number of passengers more than tripled compared to the first year in 1982. Since then, passenger growth has been exponential, with the exception of the Covid-19 pandemic. This trend was illustrated in the video that Maria do Rosário Partidário shared at the beginning of her lecture.
The Técnico professor highlighted that the work involved an ‘intense public participation’ and that ‘there was never any pressure from the government’.
The creation of this technical commission was the result of an agreement between the two parties with the largest parliamentary representation and the consequent resolution of the Council of Ministers (no. 89/2022).
Respecting European regulations, which national legislation transposes, it was necessary to approach the issue from multiple perspectives to decide between the five possible locations. For example: the airport connectivity, ‘how do we connect Portugal to the rest of the world’ as the westernmost point in Europe? The greater the connectivity, the more attractive the future Lisbon airport will be.
One of the commission’s challenges was the multidisciplinary approach needed to achieve the ideal vision of what an airport should be: accessible, efficient, intelligent, sustainable, resilient, and a hub.
In discussing the hub, Maria do Rosário Partidário gives the floor to her colleague at Técnico (and researcher at CiTUA), Rosário Macário, the ‘team’s airport expert’ who emphasised that “safety is the primary consideration” when designing an airport. According to professor Rosário Macário, one significant challenge is the conflict with military airspace, which is already causing the flight corridor from Europe to Lisbon to become very narrow.
The lecture was also attended by geologist and CERIS researcher Teresa Melo, who explained her contributions to the work and recalled ‘the importance of establishing the scale and scope of the study’ to understand the time to allocate, depending on the level of detail required for projects of this size.
The Independent Technical Commission considered eight different options for the airport’s location. Alcochete almost always came 1st or 2nd in the parameters assessed. However, the most frequent questions were ‘How long will it take?’ and ‘How much will it cost?’. ‘These were the two things people wanted to know, but of course to get there we had to do all the necessary studies’, concluded Maria do Rosário Partidário.
