Speaking to journalists at the Italian Embassy in Lisbon, marking the 20th anniversary of the airline's launch of routes between Portugal and Italy, José Lopes argued that the problem of constraints at Lisbon Airport "is not something that can be easily solved," despite some improvements.

"Compared to last year, things are better. Serious work has been done, not only in-house, because we've increased our resilience in terms of building the operation, but also through the joint work we've been doing with the regulator, the airport, and the government to try to improve things," he explained in a report by Publituris.

Still “difficult”

Despite the work being done, the head of easyJet in Portugal admits that Lisbon "continues to be a very difficult airport," where long lines for border control are common, resulting in many passengers arriving late at the boarding gate.

"Even today, we had very long lines at passport control, impacting, on some flights, almost 50% of passengers arriving late at the boarding gate, because there were problems with the machines reading their passports," he added, admitting that, despite the work to "improve these technical resources" and "human resources," the fact is that problems and delays continue to occur.

José Lopes believes that, when passengers "are returning, if they suffer these impacts at border control, they end up giving the country a bad image," but admits that the problem does not have an easy solution.

"It's not something that can be solved easily, but we have to continue working together, and the Government is committed to this, to try to improve this passenger experience," he stated, assuring that easyJet will continue working "proactively" to find solutions "to improve and solve this experience, which is not yet where it needs to be."