MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Porto Alegre's Airport to resume handling commercial flights next week

It has been over six months since the Salgado Filho Airport's runway was under water

Brazilian authorities announced Friday that Porto Alegre's Salgado Filho International Airport (POA/SBPA) in the State of Rio Grande do Sul will be reopening Monday after months of being inoperational given the unprecedented floods. The measure will be carried out as scheduled: airlines have been selling tickets for these flights since August.

“Before Christmas, the airport will be 100% operational, [including] international flights,” assured Presidential Communications Secretary Paulo Pimenta in a video posted on social media. He and Ports and Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho landed Friday morning at Salgado Filho aboard a Brazilian Air Force (FAB) aircraft to participate in the reopening ceremony.

Operations will be returning gradually. At first, only 128 daily landings and take-offs by Azul, Gol, and Latam will be handled between 8 am and 10 pm.

Salgado Filho Airport has been closed to air operations since the heavy rains and floods that hit the state last April, which left the airport runway submerged for 23 days.

Also present at Friday's event were Fraport Brasil CEO Andrea Pal, Rio Grande do Sul Lieutenant Governor Gabriel Souza, and Porto Alegre Deputy Mayor Ricardo Gomes.

The federal government contributed R$ 426 million (US$ 74.83 million) to Fraport's efforts to get the air terminal back in service. “We need to rebuild what was lost. We need to make sure that a situation like this never happens again. We're going to build a modern, efficient containment system that brings security, so that companies can work, so that businesspeople have peace of mind, but also so that families can live in their neighborhoods,” Pimenta stressed.

During Friday's event, Gomes criticized those who tried to pin the airport's mishap on the local administration and insisted that such an amount of water could have never been foreseen. “The volume of water that was needed to flood this runway with the height that the water reached, in itself speaks, I would say, of the irresponsibility of those who tried to attribute the volume of water that arrived here to one or two pump houses, or to a single floodgate,” he said.