For the second time in a few weeks, a plane flying on behalf of the President of Guinea-Bissau blocked the runway at Lisbon Airport. Last Tuesday, the private jet suffered a landing gear defect after landing.

As a result, the runway had to be closed for around 35 minutes. A comparable situation already existed on July 1, 2022, when a tire of a private jet burst and, of all things, the Gulfstream was on its way for the President of Guinea-Bissau. The runway had to be closed for some time and 23 aircraft were diverted to other airports in Portugal.

In July 2022, the obviously failure-prone plane was supposed to pick up Umaro Sissoco Embaló after his participation in the Ocean Conference. On August 16, 2022, the same Gulfstream was supposed to pick up the President of the West African country in Lisbon and just then there were chassis problems again. During the 35-minute runway closure, eleven flights had to be diverted to other airports.

Business jets are not welcome at Lisbon Airport, as the airport close to the city is considered to be chronically overloaded. However, official government planes, which include the private jet of the President of Guinea-Bissau, are allowed to land at practically any time. Business aviation is actually required to use Cascais Airport. This was modernized some time ago with the purpose of relieving Lisbon Airport.

A Portuguese aviation expert is now demanding that the capital's airport should no longer accept government flights in the future, but that these should also be operated from/to Cascais. However, this requires an explicit order from the Civil Aviation Authority. There isn't one at the moment. Lisbon Airport has only one runway, so if there are incidents on the runway, air traffic comes to a standstill.