Secretary of state for infrastructure Hugo Espírito Santo admits that “no one can be happy with the passenger experience at Portuguese airports today.
It is, he says, a situation that goes beyond the issue of border controls.
“Obviously, we have an issue at the borders (queues) and we are working intensively with ANA (airports manager) to redesign the departure area to make it easier. But…”
Hugo Espírito Santo was speaking at the 50th National Congress of the Portuguese Association of Travel and Tourism Agencies (APAVT) in Macau after the audience heard ANA’s chairman of the board José Luís Arnaut remind everyone that Lisbon’s city airport caters these days for 36 million passengers when it was designed for only 22 million.
“We are in the process of constantly improving facilities. (…) It is a permanent open-heart operation,” he said, in reference to the degrees of difficulty being faced.
In Hugo Espírito Santo’s opinion the whole lay-out of the country’s airport are at fault: “we have airports that are cramped, with narrow corridors, with the wrong indicators in terms of quality of service, even in terms of baggage delivery,” he said
“We have repeatedly had some issues with waiting times at X-ray machines, with passengers with reduced mobility (…). And we currently have enormous problems with waiting times.
“We have to look at and remember that this is not just a problem with passports and borders.
“We need to rethink what quality of service means at airports. And this is something that we (the government) and the national civil aviation agency, ANAC have been insisting on, together with ANA, in order to really make a qualitative leap forward here,” he said, adding that there is an issue too with general safety.
“I look at the safety data that NAV (air traffic control) and ANAC give me. In short, it leaves me with some concern. These are machines that are working very close to their limits, so I do have some concerns,” he said.
Earlier, Espírito Santo assured that the executive is monitoring the queues at Lisbon airport “very closely” – admitting that they are an embarrassment for the government, which hopes to have resolved the issue by the summer.
“The situation at the borders is an embarrassment for the government. There is no other name for it. We have to be humble about what we do, and right now, it is an embarrassment, and the only thing we can do is apologise,” he said.
He added that the causes exist, have been identified and solutions are being evaluated, praising the help that ANA has given in the situation.
“We are currently monitoring this issue very closely. We have five ministers directly involved, we are looking at the data on a day-to-day basis to see how long it takes to get through border control in Lisbon (…)”, he said.
“The root” of the problem “is clear” and is related to “the lack of PSP (public security police) officers”, compounded by “a difficulty and instability from a technological point of view, especially at the “e-gates”’ and, thirdly, “a slowing down of the system”.
The challenge, he said, is to have the situation resolved by June.
“It is a very serious problem, which is beyond our control,” José Luís Arnaut said, noting that, just as ANA is required to meet minimum service requirements in its concession contract, the same “has been attempted for public services” (provided by the government) but “has never come to fruition”.
Source: LUSA
