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Portugal registered 24,300 less flights in March 2020 compared to the same month of 2019, the state aviation authority NAV Portugal announced on Monday. Only 43,800 flights were registered last month, equivalent to a 36 percent drop, the organization said.
This figure includes flights arriving or departing Portuguese airports, as well as overflights, the statement said.
The sharpest decline occurred from the second half of March, when the number of flights controlled by NAV dropped by 66 percent. This coincided with the initial declaration of a state of emergency in Portugal on March 18, the statement said. The state of emergency has since been extended to April 17.
"The figures recorded in the last week of March, it seems, should remain throughout the current month, and therefore falls are expected to be around 85 percent and 95 percent," said the statement.
"The sharp drop in traffic is very worrying due to the impacts on the economy, employment and people's lives," Manuel Teixeira Rolo, chairman of the Board of Directors of NAV Portugal, was quoted as saying by the statement.
TAP, Portugal's flag carrier, said last month that it had canceled 3,500 flights, "equivalent to seven percent of flights scheduled in March, 11 percent in April and 19 percent in May" due to low demand and the drop in travel reservations caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
To date, Portugal has registered 311 deaths and 11,730 cases of infection with COVID-19. Sixteen deaths and 452 confirmed cases were reported during the past 24 hours, according to the daily bulletin of the Directorate-General for Health (DGS) published on Monday.
