Brazilian airports not ready for the World Cup 2014
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April 17th, 2010
A few months ago, IATA, the International Air Transportation Association, issued a warning informing that Brazilian airports are not ready for the World Cup.
Last week, Veja, the most influential Brazilian magazine, published on the Issue #2159, April 7th 2010, a detailed report (pages 68 through 77) about the infrastructure of the Brazilian airports, and concluded that: most airports are already working above nominal capacity; even with the planned investments (and assuming those investments will be actually realized), several airports will be still uncapable of handling the expected increase of traffic by 2014.
Access to previous issued of Veja is free (click here and search for the desired issue).
According to Veja, problems stem from mostly two reasons: the number of passengers in Brazil has been growing very rapidly, and the investments have been growing too slowly.
Brazil is experiencing an economic boom, and people from lower classes are now travelling by air, rather than by road. Besides, some new air companies were created recently, and competition is being prices downwards. These factors are increasing the number of passengers in the airports.
The graph below shows the impressive growth rate year-on-year of the number of passengers in all major Brazilian airports combined; from 2006 to the end of 2010, the total number of passengers should grow by more than 100%. During the same period, the nominal capacity of those airports didn’t increase anything.
According to Veja, the main consequences of this lack of investments are: long check-in queues; over crowding in the boarding rooms; long delays to claim baggages; shortage of fingers for aircrafts to dock and passengers to board and unboard.
The image below compares the airports of Guarulhos, in São Paulo (the busiest in Brazil) and the airport of Gatwick, in London.
São Paulo receives a bit more than 21 million passengers per year (nominal capacity is 15 million per year), whereas Gatwick receives a bit more than 34 million; in Guarulhos, there are 61 fingers, against 108 in London; São Paulo have 260 check-in counters, against 317 in London. São Paulo looks much more crowded.
All major Brazilian airports are ran by Infraero, an State owned company. Infraero’s site publishes statistics about passengers and cargo in all airports.
Infraero collects the boarding taxes paid by passengers (R$ 19.62 – about US$ 12 – for flights within the country, and US$ 36 for international flights); besides, Infraero collects several fees from aircrafts operators.
Infraero should employ that money to maintain airports running smoothly; but apparently they are not capable of doint that.
This other report talks about problems in Brazilian airports.
April 27th, 2010 at 10:44 am
Since you obviously speak portuguese, i’d advise you to read something else than Veja once in a while or at least know that they’re not exactly what we Brazilian journalists call an example of serious work and ethics.
Infraero had their reply to the typical government-bashing that comes along every week on their magazine, check it out at http://www.infraero.gov.br/template_noticia2.php?cod_noticia=3756&PHPSESSID=9qnnipe6a4bj99naplvfjljnh7
July 22nd, 2010 at 5:29 pm
[...] state of the airports is a good example. Investment is long overdue and the main airports in Brazil are already operating much beyond their [...]
August 4th, 2010 at 9:48 pm
[...] Brazilian airports are already working above capacity and, despite measures to attempt to speed up their building, we don’t know if the airports will be ready for 2014. Even if the airports are ready, we don’t know if there will be a sufficient supply of seats. And now, even if the airlines sell the tickets, we don’t know if they will actually transport the passenger. [...]