By: CHRIS GRAEME
IT’S NOT exactly glamorous but then the glamour days of air travel are long since gone. In fact, it looks rather like a cattle shed or a milking station for Jersey cows. However, ANA’s new Terminal 2 at Lisbon’s Portela Airport is functional, modern and relatively cheap, and will buy the overcrowded airport time before the new airport at Ota, or Alcochete, finally opens in 2017.
Terminal 2 is easy to get to. In fact, one can’t fail to notice the obvious bright green arrow signs plastered all over the floor at Departures and Arrivals in the main building.
Then, right outside the main terminal building, a smart yellow, gas driven bus takes you to the ‘cattle shed’ along a purpose-built road within a stone’s throw of the circular road, in about five minutes at regular intervals.
Inside, people are still queuing up, in front of the 22 check-in desks which will whisk passengers away to destinations both near and far within the Portuguese territories: Faro, Porto, Funchal, São Miguel and Terceira.
The baggage trolleys are new and make interesting partitions for those delayed passengers bedded down on the floor for the night and The Resident has it on good authority that the turquoise chairs, of which there seem few, are the most comfortable the airport has ever had.
On the air side, which does look more inviting and comfortable, there are the usual shops, Astrolab café and newsagents, and the buses that ferry you on to waiting planes on the tarmac, since there are no portable walk-on passageways, or mangas.
Functional
Nuno Costa, ANA’s Head of Aviation Marketing and Public Relations officer, told The Resident during its tour of the new installations: “It’s not the Taj Mahal, I’ll grant you, neither is it a Norman Foster statement in glass and white painted steel, but it is functional and relieves the pressure on the main terminal.”
There have been teething problems since it came into operation on August 1 after being built in the record time of only five months and 20 days.
One of the problems which the national press has drawn attention to is the long passenger delays, but then the airport still only has two runways, so nothing can change there.
The other is the noticeable piles of baggage littering the sides of the terminal resulting from, one can only imagine, too much delayed air traffic, baggage handlers on holiday or too many passengers – or perhaps a combination of the three.
“Although we have been up and running barely three days, we have already noticed the difference in the main terminal which is less congested at peak times in the morning,” said Nuno Costa.
“For now, it will only serve for departures for internal Portuguese territory flights but, as time goes by, the possibility exists for international low cost airlines and other carriers to use the terminal for check-in.
“At the end of the day, we had to do something to relieve the congestion and overcapacity. It wasn’t worth building a state-of-the-art structure, since many airlines, keen on competitive prices and cutting costs, don’t want to pay for that. They want a minimal and efficient terminal for an A-B service, and that’s, for now, exactly what they’ve got,” he said.
Terminal 2 in facts and figures:
Check-ins: 22
Total area: 7,700 square meters
Electronic check-in posts: 6
Gates: 12
Passenger capacity (per hour): 1,500
Passenger capacity (daily): 5,000
Daily departure capacity: 66
Dedicated transfers holding area for 750 passengers (per hour)
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