Clarification

Concerning the disturbances in passenger processing which took place last Saturday in the national airports, ANA Aeroportos de Portugal would like to clarify the following:

- while the strike included all of ANA network’s airports, it had almost no effect at Porto, Faro, Funchal, Porto Santo, Ponta Delgada, Horta, Santa Maria and Flores airports; the participation rate varied from airport to airport and reached its highest level at Lisbon Airport;
- all of the 1,195 planned flights were carried out due to the measures put into practice to ensure their execution, albeit with delays which were only significant in Lisbon;
- this was one of the Saturdays with the highest traffic in the year, which, even without a strike, would have certainly led to a few constraints, naturally made worse by the personnel restrictions stemming from the unions’ non-compliance regarding the mandated minimum services (in Lisbon, attendance amounted to only 45% of the resources defined by the Ordinance regulating minimum services); regarding this, we deplore and repudiate the intimidation and misinformation measures used to prevent the service provider’s workers wanting to work from doing so;
- none of the implemented measures put the security control in question given that the prior check of passengers entering the security control area is intended to measure service quality and restrict access to the check point for people without a boarding pass;
- ANAC Inspectors were present at the Lisbon Airport, ensuring that the security rules and procedures were never compromised;
- out of an expected total of 155,000 passengers, around 5,000 (a little over 3%) were unable to embark their flights, naturally without prejudice to the protection measures potentially adopted by the corresponding airlines.

The airport manager, along with the ANAC and the police authorities, will evaluate the adoption of technological means that, together with the police authorities’ supervision, are able to guarantee the security control procedures, making the operations’ regularity and passenger well-being less vulnerable to industrial actions such as this.