ANA Files Lisboa-Portela Capacity-Expansion EIA With APA — Humberto Delgado Movement Cap Steps From 38 to 40 per Hour With Works Starting Early 2027 and a Second EIA to 42/Hour Already Queued

The Aeroportos de Portugal (ANA) concessionaire has filed the Estudo de Impacto Ambiental (EIA, Environmental Impact Study) for the first stage of the Aeroporto Humberto Delgado capacity expansion with the Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente (APA, Portuguese Environment Agency), ECO confirmed on Friday 5 June 2026 against the original Expresso scoop of 4 June. The filed envelope steps the slot ceiling from the current 38 movements per hour up to 40 movements per hour, with the construction window pencilled to open at the start of 2027.

The EIA enters APA's standard procedural pipeline. The agency will run the technical review and a public-consultation period that typically lasts 30 to 50 working days, with environmental associations expected to file formal objections on noise, air-quality and bird-strike grounds — the same vectors that have historically shaped APA scrutiny of Humberto Delgado expansion files in the Lisbon-Setúbal axis. If the APA issues a Declaração de Impacte Ambiental (DIA, Environmental Impact Declaration) in favour, ANA must then deliver a Relatório de Conformidade Ambiental do Projeto de Execução (RECAPE, Environmental Conformity Report of the Execution Project) before the first ground works can start — the same RECAPE stage that the Mota-Engil-led Porto-Soure TGV Lot A re-submitted to APA on 5 June 2026, illustrating the standard sequence the Portuguese environmental-licensing framework runs from EIA through DIA to RECAPE before execution.

The expansion architecture rests on the Resolução do Conselho de Ministros (Council of Ministers Resolution) approved in May 2024, which earmarked the Lisbon airport for an interim capacity stretch ahead of the long-horizon Aeroporto Luís de Camões opening in Alcochete. The Conselho de Ministros also signed off in May 2026 on a €4.5 million envelope to clear the Campo de Tiro de Alcochete site for the €8.5 billion Camões airport, putting the Humberto Delgado stretch and the Alcochete greenfield on a parallel — not sequential — track. ANA chief executive Thierry Ligonnière told a parliamentary hearing in January 2026 that the company will file a second EIA at the start of 2027 to push the Humberto Delgado movement cap from 40 to 42 per hour, telegraphing a two-step regulatory itinerary across the 2027-2030 window.

Stretching the slot ceiling from 38 to 40 hourly movements lifts Humberto Delgado's theoretical hourly throughput by roughly 5.3% but the practical summer-peak relief is larger. The 38-movement frame routinely breaches its scheduling cap in the 07:00-09:00 morning bank and the 18:00-21:00 evening bank during peak May-September traffic, producing the chronic departure-delay tail that IATA's Rafael Schvartzman flagged on 2 June 2026 as Portugal's biggest summer aviation risk on a 51% Eurocontrol punctuality read. The Magnus Brunner Frontex 25-agent / €7-8 million infrastructure envelope confirmed for the EES rollout on 4 June 2026 sits on a complementary register — border-control throughput rather than airside slot capacity — but both files frame Humberto Delgado as the single largest national-aviation bottleneck the State is racing to ease before Alcochete.

ANA, the French-controlled concessionaire majority-owned by Vinci, posted a record €599 million profit in 2025 — up 16% year-on-year — and is partially self-funding the Humberto Delgado stretch through retained earnings under the concession's investment-trigger clauses. The 38-to-40 step does not require contractual renegotiation of the concession's tarifa de utilização aeroportuária (airport user-fee schedule) but the second step (40-to-42) probably will, given the additional terminal-side investment the higher slot count needs in the satellite-pier and apron-stand footprint. Environmental associations including Quercus and ZERO have historically opposed Humberto Delgado expansion files, framing the airport's urban-perimeter footprint at Sacavém and Olivais as incompatible with EU air-quality directives — the public-consultation phase opening at APA over the coming weeks will route those objections through the formal record.

For passengers, the 38-to-40 step matters mostly through the indirect channel: better schedule reliability across the summer peak and a smaller tail of cascading delays at the connecting hubs (Frankfurt, Amsterdam, London Heathrow, Paris CDG, Munich, Madrid Barajas) that Lisbon feeds. For ground-side residents at Sacavém, Olivais, Bobadela and Moscavide, the slot-cap rise translates mechanically into a higher noise envelope along the standard approach and departure tracks, with the EIA filing required to set out the additional mitigation programme. For the Portuguese travel-industry build-out — Turismo de Portugal targets, the SATA inter-island summer-surge confirmed on 5 June 2026 via the Luxwing Q400 ACMI lease, the Air France-KLM and Lufthansa positioning around the TAP privatisation, and the Galp aviation-fuel decarbonisation programme at the Sines refinery — the Humberto Delgado capacity stretch is the load-bearing infrastructure piece that anchors the 2027-2030 traffic forecast.