Contributor - South America

Richard Pedicini

Brazilian aviation associations filled an auditorium at São Paulo Campo de Marte Airport on Monday evening to forge a common front against a proposal by the state’s newly elected governor to close the airfield and turn it into a park, with the runway being repurposed for basketball, soccer, and other sports. Campo de Marte, which is near the São Paulo city-center, is Brazil’s busiest general aviation airport and ranks eighth in the country’s airports overall, with 70,000 operations last year.

 


“The cause is more than just, more than noble, and I’ll speak to everyone from aldermen to the president of the republic,” vowed the state’s newly elected senator, Sérgio Olímpio Gomes, better known as Major Olímpio, a title earned from his state police career. State legislator Oscar Castello Branco, another of the politicians forming the “legislative front” to defend the airport, echoed the sentiment. Jorge Bittar, president of Brazilian air taxi association ABTaer, presented the paperwork outlining this position.

 


Flávio Pires, CEO of Brazilian business and general aviation association ABAG, opened the meeting laying out its purpose—the formation of a broad coalition of associations—and providing a more technical defense of the airfield. He refuted the governor’s professed safety concerns and added that the airport has been the country’s fifth-busiest by number of operations and is likely to move up again as the economy recovers, since “business aviation swings are wider than those for commercial aviation.”

 


Pires also looked to the future, pointing out that emerging technologies such as urban aviation mobility solutions, expected as early as 2023, will require a large urban airport or heliport for support.

 


Every few years, a proposal is made to close the airport—“Save Campo de Marte” was the theme of LABACE 2017. While this has been done under a variety of pretexts, the underlying motive is always the same: real estate interests want to fill the approach path area with high-rises. “People are always saying, ‘Remove [wholesale market] CEAGESP, remove Campo de Marte,’ because they are relatively small areas, and people stand to make millions,” said Olímpio.

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