The creation of a public-private partnership with a regional scope is the solution considered to be the most advantageous for the Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport, which should be managed independently from the new Lisbon airport. These are two of the main conclusions of the study carried out by the Faculdade de Economia do Porto (FEP - Faculty of Economics) and the consultant Deloitte. They were highlighted in the summary given by Rui Rio, President of Junta Metropolitana do Porto (JMP), at the end of the press conference dedicated to the public presentation of the extensive document.

The recognition that the Sá Carneiro Airport is strategically decisive for the development of the Porto Metropolitan Area and the North Region was another of the study's "verdicts", duly underlined by the mayor, who made it clear that the JMP "must not fail to assume this as a fundamental issue".

The President of the metropolitan structure will take a political position on this matter and on the steps to be taken in the immediate future at the next meeting of the Council, but he considers it negative that the Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport should be integrated in a national management model, because it could "be harmed in benefit of a greater investment around the new Lisbon Airport".

Admitting that it will not be in the Government's interest to reject outright the proposed model (public-private partnership with local authority participation), Rui Rio stated that the issue here is the optimization of the use to be made of the Sá Carneiro Airport from a national point of view, although - in his view - "when looking at the national plan, one cannot lose sight of the local and regional point of view".

The mayor stressed that the concession to a public-private partnership would generate revenue for the State. In addition to this model, the study looked at five other alternatives, namely: public-private partnership under private law, managed by public entities; public monopoly (as ANA’s case); private monopoly; public partnership and private management.

Although he did not explicitly choose a specific option, the FEP's coordinator of the study, Pedro Quelhas Brito, advocated the involvement of local authorities in the management of the Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport as a "necessary condition" for the process to function properly.

Greater efficiency and capacity to attract low costs, greater security and greater coordination of interests with local partners are some of the added values found in a public-private partnership model.

(Full text available in Portuguese)