Bárbara Chaves, Mayor of Vila do Porto, intends to reinforce new contacts regarding the need to reopen Santa Maria International Airport at night. She stresses that she intends to notify the competent authorities, starting with ANA/VINCI, which manages the infrastructure. The mayor’s position is reinforced by the last two requests for emergency landings: one from Avianca in November, with around 250 passengers, and another from Air Europa in December, with around 355 passengers.


For Bárbara Chaves, these situations “reinforce the importance” of Santa Maria International Airport as an “extremely important” backup infrastructure in an emergency for transatlantic commercial aviation and to support the airlines’ ETOPS.
In addition to safety issues, Santa Maria’s geostrategic position “also has potential for supporting the operation of Business Aviation technical stopovers, which can be exploited to a much greater extent, with the resulting economic added value,

“And the issues of maintaining the condition of the taxiway and improving the parking areas will also be matters to be reinforced.” said the Mayor of Vila do Porto, who had already scheduled a meeting for November 2023 in Lisbon with the Minister for Infrastructure to reinforce this issue at a time when efforts were being made to change the concession contract with VINCI so that “concerns” related to Santa Maria International Airport would be taken into account in future negotiations with VINCI.

From Correio do Açores, Natalino Viveiros, director

The Association LPAZ stated on their Facebook: With air traffic doubling over the next 20 years, this (emergency and other stops from international flights) will happen much more frequently. As always, for operational, meteorological, and jurisdictional reasons, we need 2 airports in the Azores capable and available for the needs of a connecting Atlantic.
It is absurd for a society not to take advantage of and capitalize on its infrastructures. In an emergency and in normal circumstances. 

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Cultures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance)  at California State University.

Below is a link to a news segment from RTP-Açores regarding one of these emergency landings. The news report is in Portuguese. 

Editor’s Note: We have been urging the RTP-Açores, for many years now, to have their newscasts subtitled in English for the Diaspora and even for tourists visiting the archipelago, among other benefits. 

https://acores.rtp.pt/local/air-europa-aterragem-de-emergencia-em-santa-maria/