Ten More Cents a Passenger at Lisbon, Thirty-Four at Porto and Faro: ANA's 2027 Charge Proposal Lands Below Inflation in One City and Above It in Two

ANA Aeroportos de Portugal (Airports of Portugal), the Vinci-controlled concessionaire that runs every commercial airport on Portuguese soil except the two in Madeira that sit in a separate group, has put its 2027 tariff proposal to the airlines. From 1 January 2027 it wants the regulated charges at Lisbon to rise 0.67 percent, which works out at about ten more cents per passenger. At Porto the proposed rise is 3.77 percent and at Faro 3.79 percent, both of which come to roughly 34 more cents per passenger. The increase is concentrated at Humberto Delgado in Lisbon; the Madeira, Azores and Beja tariffs are unchanged.

The numbers were first reported by Jornal de Negócios and carried on Saturday by ECO. ANA is also asking to rework the way it bills passenger processing and aircraft parking, and to split landing charges by aircraft noise. None of it is settled: the proposal has to be approved by the Autoridade Nacional da Aviação Civil (National Civil Aviation Authority, ANAC), the sector regulator.

Two details in the proposal matter more than the headline percentages. The first is that ANA has put a ceiling on itself: a maximum average regulated revenue of 14.80 euros per passenger across the Lisbon airport group. The second is that none of this includes the new Luís de Camões airport at Alcochete, which the concession treats under its own separate regulatory arrangement.

Why Lisbon Rises by a Tenth of What Porto Does

The gap between 0.67 percent and 3.77 percent is not a commercial choice made in a boardroom. It falls out of a formula written into Annex 12 of the Contrato de Concessão de Serviço Público Aeroportuário (Public Airport Service Concession Contract), the document ANAC publishes in full and which has governed the concession since 2013.

Annex 12 does not regulate a price list. It regulates a number called the Receita Regulada Média Máxima, the maximum average regulated revenue the concessionaire may earn per terminal passenger. ANA is free to move individual charges around underneath that number; what it cannot do is breach the cap. Crucially, the cap is calculated separately for three units: the Lisbon Group, Porto Airport and Faro Airport.

The base mechanism is the same for all three. Last year's cap is indexed to the August harmonised consumer price index of the preceding year, then reduced by an efficiency factor X. For the 2027 tariffs, that means August 2026, and the INE flash estimate published on 31 August put Portugal's harmonised inflation at 3.6 percent, up from 3.1 percent in July. Definitive figures are due on 10 September.

Set the proposals against that indexation input and the asymmetry becomes legible. Porto at 3.77 percent and Faro at 3.79 percent land marginally above the August harmonised rate. Lisbon at 0.67 percent lands nearly three points below it, which in real terms is a cut of roughly three percent in what ANA may charge per passenger at Portela.

The reason sits in the same annex. Where Porto and Faro carry only one further adjustment term, the restoration of the concession's economic and financial balance under clause 25, the Lisbon Group carries four. Alongside clause 25, Lisbon's cap absorbs an adjustment for the binding agreement on the development of the new Lisbon airport under clause 48, an adjustment arising from a benchmark test, and an adjustment from a traffic risk sharing mechanism. All three units then take a fifth adjustment, which claws back or refunds the deviation between the cap set two years earlier and what was actually earned.

In other words, Lisbon's number is the product of a busier formula, one that has the new airport wired directly into it. Porto's and Faro's track the indexation more closely because there is less machinery attached.

The Test ANAC Ran in March, and Passed Both Airports

There is a second document behind the Porto and Faro figures, and it is the more interesting one. Point 8.12(a) of Annex 12 obliges ANAC to run a periodic assessment of whether Porto and Faro remain competitive, specifically of their capacity to attract airlines when set against comparable airport operators elsewhere in the European Union. ANAC published the analysis for 2025 in March 2026.

The method, agreed with the airlines and with ANA after a consultation, builds a comparison panel for each airport: nine European airports for Porto, five for Faro, selected on size in 2019 traffic, hub type and passenger type. Porto is classified by Airports Council International as a low-cost-carrier hub, so only other low-cost hubs stayed in its panel. For Faro, every hub was excluded. The measure is the five-year moving average of the ACI airport connectivity index, with 2020 and 2021 dropped by common agreement because pandemic restrictions were too uneven across Europe to compare.

The results were not close. Porto's connectivity index reached 3,687 points in 2025, 26.4 percent above its panel average of 2,916. On the five-year moving measure, Porto rose 3.29 percent while the panel as a whole fell 2.91 percent, a gap of 6.2 percentage points. Faro sat almost exactly level with its panel on the raw index, 1,712 points against 1,716, but rose 2.67 percent on the moving measure against a panel average of 2.12 percent.

ANAC's conclusion was that both airports maintain their competitive position. Porto and Bologna were the only two airports in Porto's panel to have exceeded their 2019 connectivity levels. Faro cleared its own 2019 level in both 2024 and 2025, while Marseille and Malta had not.

That is the regulator's own finding, published six months ago, that the two airports being asked to absorb the larger increases are the two that have most outperformed their European peers. It does not make the rise automatic, and ANAC still has to approve it. But it does remove the most obvious argument an airline could make against it.

What This Means for Expats

• The per-passenger cost is small, and that is the point. Ten cents at Lisbon and 34 cents at Porto or Faro will not change anyone's booking decision. Airport charges are levied on airlines, not on you directly, and whether they are passed through in full depends on the route and the carrier. If you fly four return trips a year out of Porto, the theoretical maximum pass-through is under three euros.
• It is not the only line on the ticket. Portugal's two euro carbon charge on departing flights, introduced in 2021, has already raised 266 million euros. That charge, the regulated airport charge and the airline's own fees are three separate things, and only the middle one is what ANAC is being asked to approve here.
• Watch the noise differentiation. ANA also wants landing charges to vary by aircraft noise. If approved, that is a slow lever on which aircraft airlines schedule into Portela at unsocial hours, and it interacts with the night-flight limits at Lisbon that have been contested all year.
• The new airport is not in these numbers. Anyone budgeting for what flying out of Lisbon will cost after Alcochete opens should not read across from the 14.80 euro figure. The concession gives the new airport its own regulatory treatment, and the terms of that are a separate negotiation.
• Porto and Faro passengers are, in a sense, paying for success. The regulator's competitiveness test is what keeps both airports inside the lighter arm of the price control rather than pushing them somewhere else. Passing it comfortably, as both did, is what makes an above-inflation increase defensible.

ANAC has not published a decision date. The airlines have the proposal, the regulator has the file, and the tariffs would take effect on 1 January. The number to watch is not the percentage but the 14.80 euros: it is the first time the Lisbon Group cap has been put in public alongside a proposal, and it is the ceiling against which every later argument about the new airport's economics will be made.