Lisbon (LIS)

Lisbon airport, a mere 7 km from the centre of Lisbon has been recently rebuilt, partially to coincide with the 1998 Expo, and also because before that it badly needed it. Now there is a very modern terminal building, with excellent connecting infrastructure (didn’t imagine myself saying that in relation to Portugal!) and altogether it is a very pleasant experience. Many Brits fly into Portugal via Faro, so may not be that familiar with Lisbon, ...
...and having last been to Lisbon in February for a cricket tournament, I felt I was able to comment.

Most of the airport was signposted in English, although there were a few places where the signs were in Portuguese only, although generally the staff spoke enough English to be able to direct you to where you wanted to go. The airport was clean and tidy, and the nice and cool, even though it was 28 degrees outside in the middle of February. ... more

Lisbon airport, a mere 7 km from the centre of Lisbon has been recently rebuilt, partially to coincide with the 1998 Expo, and also because before that it badly needed it. Now there is a very modern terminal building, with excellent connecting infrastructure (didn’t imagine myself saying that in relation to Portugal!) and altogether it is a very pleasant experience. Many Brits fly into Portugal via Faro, so may not be that familiar with Lisbon, but its airport is certainly worthy of praise.

Firstly there minimum check-in times are shorter than in a lot of airports in mainland European. For internal flights you can check in half an hour before departure, for flights for Madeira and the Azores, which of course both belong to Portugal, the minimum check-in time is 45 minutes in advance, and for other European destinations, the minimum check-in time is an hour.

If you are arriving in Lisbon, the airport is very well connected if you are heading on elsewhere, with plenty of cheap hire car companies about, and road connections are exceptionally easy, with well-signed routes to the main motorways both northwards and southwards. If you hire a car, and discover that it is in one of the further away car parks (numbers 3 and 4) then you can make use of the free airport shuttle service, which runs every five minutes. To get into the City Centre, the Aerobus is your best bet if you arrive between 7am and 9pm, and it leaves every 20 minutes from the airport. Taxis are available from the arrivals and departures terminals and are generally reliable, even if the driving is more of the style of Pedro Lamy than a genteel ride.

There is a wide selection of restaurants and cafeterias offering traditional airport food – nothing too much to write home about, and there is a McDonalds in the departures area, if you are that way inclined. With most of the flights within the EU, there is of course no duty free as such, but you can still pick up cigarettes and alcohol (and Oasis singles!) reasonably, with a litre of Bombay Blue Sapphire – my standard purchase at Duty Free – costing £10 including a martini glass, which is about average. Cigarettes cost about £10 for a carton of 200. There are quite a few clothes shops, which also offered designer clothes at attractive prices, although I didn’t take up the opportunity to “burgle the boutiques”, having had a session in the Hugo Boss outlet at Vienna Airport on the way out.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the accessibility for wheelchair users is generally pretty good, with assorted lifts and ramps making it easy for disabled travellers. I often tend to notice the abundance or lack of disabled facilities from carrying large cricket bags around – generally they have similar dimensions and can only go where a wheelchair could go, and having last been to Lisbon in February for a cricket tournament, I felt I was able to comment.

Most of the airport was signposted in English, although there were a few places where the signs were in Portuguese only, although generally the staff spoke enough English to be able to direct you to where you wanted to go. The airport was clean and tidy, and the nice and cool, even though it was 28 degrees outside in the middle of February. I had no problems with baggage retrieval and my luggage had no visible marks to it from overzealous baggage handlers. All in all, a pleasant enough place to fly to, and one I hope I will be going back to. 

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