National airports in Portugal handled around 10 million passengers in the third quarter, which corresponds to a growth of 92.7% compared to the same period last year, still far from the levels of 2019.

According to the report on transport activity in the third quarter of the year, released by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), “in the third quarter of 2021, national airports handled around 10 million passengers (+92.7% compared to the same period of 2020)". Even so, compared to the same period of 2019, before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, there was a decrease of 45%.

Trains

The transport of passengers by train and by metro grew by 19.1% and 12.5%, respectively, corresponding to 32.8 and 35.5 million users transported in that period. However, compared to the third quarter of 2019, there were drops of 28.8% and 45.2%, respectively.

Boats

In the period under review, the transport of passengers by inland waterway, which had already grown 97.1% in the second quarter of this year, also increased (6.5%) compared to the same quarter of last year, reaching 4.8 million passengers, however, compared to the same three months of 2019, the transport of passengers by river decreased 32.6%.

Goods

With regard to the transport of goods by air, the growth compared to the third quarter of 2020 was less significant than in the previous quarter (+52.5%; +108.3% in the second quarter), but still with a reduction 7% compared to the same period in 2019.

In the case of freight transport by rail, there were increases of 16.5% over the same period of 2020 (+24.0% in the second quarter) and 10.3% over the same period in 2019.

By sea, however, there was a slight increase of 0.7% compared to the third quarter of last year (+29.7% in the second quarter of 2021), also registering a slight increase compared to the same period of 2019 ( +1%). Finally, road transport increased slightly, growing 0.2% compared to the same three months in 2020, but decreased compared to 2019 (-3.9%).