With the agreement between the federal government, the city of Rio de Janeiro and the government of Rio de Janeiro, the new ordinance once again limiting the number of passengers at Santos Dumont airport (RJ) to 6.5 million will be published soon.
In the text, it is expected that monitoring will be carried out over the next five years to understand whether this maximum annual demand is adequate for the airport and, if necessary, there may be changes after this period, as informed by the Minister of Ports and Airports, Silvio Costa Filho, to CNN Infra.
“We work together to seek a balance in aviation in Rio de Janeiro”, said Silvio Costa Filho. The agreement was officially closed last week after a visit from the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, to the President of the Republic and the minister.
This new ordinance will revoke the decision, from the end of 2025, which relaxed the passenger limit at the airport and would allow this figure to increase from 6.5 million to 8 million people from this year onwards.
“The eventual adoption of this parameter does not only consider the operational efficiency of the airport equipment, but also aspects related to the sustainability of the surrounding urban infrastructure, the fluidity of traffic in the region and the preservation of the population’s quality of life”, explains the Ministry of Ports and Airports in a note.
Santos Dumont has been operating with this limitation since 2023, at the request of the Rio de Janeiro executive and several representatives of the airline market. However, the discussion about demand coordination between airports has been going on since 2021.
The objective of the policy was to reduce the number of flights from the national airport to make the Galeão operation viable. During the period, Santos Dumont operated close to capacity, receiving almost 11 million passengers per year, while the international airport was idle and transported close to 7 million passengers.
Since the beginning of this policy, Galeão’s demand has reached 18 million and Santos Dumont’s has fallen by half.
