Francisco Sa Carneiro Airport

Porto's airport opened in 1945 at Pedras Rubras, a site north of the city in the town of Maia. It replaced a small, older airfield at Espinho, which had become too limited for growing traffic. For decades afterward, Porto stayed a modest regional airport serving northern Portugal. A large share of its passengers were emigrants who worked abroad in France, Germany, and Switzerland, flying home to visit family each summer.

The airport was later renamed for Francisco Sa Carneiro, a prime minister killed in the 1980 Camarate air crash. A complete rebuild in the 2000s brought a new terminal, an upgraded runway. A metro link to the city center, tying the airport directly into public transit. Results came fast. In 2007, Porto won an IATA Eagle Award, given to the best airport worldwide in its size category.

Traffic then grew much faster than expected, as low cost carriers, meaning airlines that keep fares cheap, moved in. Ryanair made Porto one of its most important continental bases, and easyJet and Wizz Air followed. TAP Air Portugal built up its own long-haul flights to Brazil and North America. Porto is now Portugal's second busiest airport. It also feeds tourism and the huge Portuguese diaspora across Europe and the Americas.

Porto operates a single runway, 17/35, about 3,480 meters long, plus one modern terminal built in the 2000s. That terminal was made generous enough to absorb two decades of growth without a rebuild. Ryanair bases a large fleet here, mixing low-cost leisure trips and diaspora traffic with TAP Air Portugal's Lisbon connections and long-haul flights to Brazil and North America.

Metro Line E links the terminal to central Porto in about half an hour. Atlantic weather brings frequent low cloud and sea fog. Pilots regularly rely on instrument approaches, meaning landing systems that guide planes down in poor visibility, at both runway ends.