Porto Santo Airport

The island of Porto Santo was the first in the Autonomous Region of Madeira to have an airport infrastructure.

In 1959, the contract was awarded for the first phase of the building of Porto Santo Airport. It ran in an almost north-south direction, was appropriately surfaced and signposted and had an aircraft parking apron and a small passenger terminal of a temporary nature. The runway at Porto Santo was 2000 metres long.

The first aircraft to land here was a DC-4 from the TAP airline, piloted by Amado da Cunha, on 20 July 1960.

Over the years, some improvements have been made to this infrastructure. Firstly, the runway was extended to 2440 metres in length and the aircraft parking apron was enlarged. In the early 1980s, the runway was resurfaced. After this, the major redesign of Porto Santo Airport began, still in the 1980s, culminating in the inauguration of our passenger terminal on 28 August 1995. During this phase, the runway was extended to 3000 metres and resurfaced, together with the construction of a new aircraft parking apron and a new and larger traffic circulation route.

This set of building works made it possible for any type of aircraft to operate at Porto Santo Airport, and at the same time new facilities were built to provide support to aircraft navigation, namely a new control tower and a radar for supporting the air traffic flying over Porto Santo.