Brazil proposes building 800 new airports

I admit, I had to do a double-take when I first read this headline. Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, has announced that she wants to build 800 new airports in the country to tackle its economic slowdown.

However, after looking a little further into the reasoning, it might not be such a crazy idea after all.

The plan is to build an airport within 40 miles of every town and city of 100,000 or more inhabitants. When you think that Brazil has a population of 194 million, and is 17 times bigger than Spain, it starts to make sense.

Brazil’s economy was once booming, but has started to slow. It is also going to be an important few years for the country, as it approaches the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Many of the existing airports in Brazil, such as Sao Paulo Guarulhos, are bursting at the seams and need further capacity. Air transport in the country has grown 120% in the past ten years, and the number of people coming out of poverty has been 30 million in the same period.

It is therefore clear that the infrastructure needs to be improved and expanded. So we’re going to have a lot more places to visit in the future for spotting endeavours!