Key takeaways
- Low-cost airlines carried at least 78% of Faro airport's passengers in April–June 2026, led by Ryanair at 37% and Jet2 at 13%; TAP was outside Faro's top ten (ANAC bulletin n.º 70, summed by us).
- At Lisbon the same quarter low-cost airlines carried about 24% and TAP 44%; the core low-cost share has moved only from 18% (Q3 2019) to 22%, held down by slots and the highest charges in ANA's network.
- Across the five largest airports low-cost airlines carried about 43% of passengers in Q2 2026 (37.6% for Ryanair, easyJet and Transavia alone), against 59.2% of Spain's international arrivals in 2025 (Turespaña) and 63% of Italy's passengers (ENAC).
- TAP remains Portugal's largest airline: 1,651,931 passengers in August 2026 against Ryanair's 1,409,989 (ANAC). Since August 2019 TAP has fallen 5.3% and Ryanair grown 36.9% (derived).
- Funchal changed most: its low-cost share rose from 31% in Q3 2019 to 54% in Q2 2026, and easyJet now matches TAP at 18%. Ponta Delgada went the other way, to about 1% after Ryanair left in March 2026.
- ANAC has published airline rankings by airport every quarter since 2009 and nationally every month; our own files wrongly said nothing had appeared since 2021. No Portuguese body classifies airlines as low-cost.
- ANA collected €15.35 per passenger at Lisbon airport in 2025, against €8.62 at Porto and €8.59 at Faro; the €14.59 often quoted for Lisbon is the Lisbon group including Madeira, the Azores and Beja.
- Air fares bought by Portuguese residents rose 15.6% between 2019 and 2025 against 40.0% across the EU (Eurostat HICP, derived), but no Portuguese survey measures how low-cost and network passengers differ in spending.
At Faro airport between April and June 2026, low-cost airlines carried at least 78% of passengers. Ryanair alone carried 37%, and TAP, Portugal's flag carrier, did not make the top ten. At Lisbon in the same quarter TAP carried 44% and the low-cost airlines together carried about 24%. Two airports 280 km apart run on different airline models.
Those figures come from the Portuguese civil aviation authority, ANAC, which has published airline rankings for every airport every quarter since 2009. Our own series files said the opposite. Earlier articles in this series, including our Porto airport analysis, stated that no airline shares had appeared since 2021. They had. ANAC's bulletin n.º 70, covering April–June 2026, came out in August 2026, and its monthly newsletter ranks the country's 15 largest airlines by passengers. What ANAC does not publish is a low-cost category. Nobody in Portugal does: not ANAC, not INE, not Turismo de Portugal, not the airport operator ANA. Every low-cost share for Portugal, including the ones in this article, is a sum of named airlines.
Summed that way, Portugal is less low-cost than its neighbours. Across the five largest airports, low-cost airlines carried about 43% of passengers in the second quarter of 2026 (derived). Spain's tourism agency counts 59.2% of its 2025 international air arrivals on low-cost airlines, and Italy's aviation authority 63% of all passengers. The difference is Lisbon, which handles half of Portugal's air traffic and where slots, charges and TAP's hub hold the low-cost share near a quarter. Outside Lisbon, Portugal looks like Spain's leisure coasts.
Where the numbers come from, and why they are lower bounds
ANAC publishes two series with airline detail. The Boletim Estatístico Trimestral lists, for each airport, the ten airlines with the most passengers and the ten with the most flights, as percentages rounded to whole numbers. The monthly traffic newsletter gives a national top 15 by passenger count. Neither labels any airline as low-cost, and the quarterly bulletin gives no national ranking at all. The national shares quoted in the Portuguese press in 2021 and 2022 were calculated by ECO and PressTUR from the airport lists. ANAC never published them.
We use two definitions. The core group is Ryanair, easyJet (its European, British and Swiss airlines combined) and Transavia (France and Netherlands). The broad group adds Jet2, Vueling, Eurowings and Wizz Air wherever they appear in a top-ten list. Because only the top ten are listed and shares are rounded, both sums understate the real share. Volotea, Norwegian, SmartWings and other smaller low-cost airlines that fly to Porto and Faro never reach a top-ten line.
The denominator also matters. A passenger flying Lisbon to Funchal is counted once at each airport, so the sum of airport totals is larger than the national total. In August 2026 the twenty airport totals summed to 7,975,690 passengers and ANAC's corrected national total was 7,239,476. ANAC does not say which basis its airline counts use. On the airport-sum basis Ryanair, easyJet and Transavia carried 33.5% of August passengers; on the national basis 37.0%. Add Jet2, Vueling and Eurowings and the range is 40.1% to 44.1% (all derived). We use the airport-sum figure as the like-for-like one.
Two cautions on the source itself. The text layer of ANAC's recent bulletins is garbled when read by machine, and one extraction of bulletin n.º 70 assigned each airport the list belonging to the next one. The airport shares used here match an independent reading of the same bulletin and CNN Portugal's report of 15 October 2026 for Porto, Funchal and Ponta Delgada. Lisbon's list rests on one reading and should be checked against the printed page before it is cited. Eurostat collects airline identity but publishes it as code 888, anonymised for commercial confidentiality, so there is no European cross-check.
Five airports, five airline markets
Faro is the most low-cost airport in Portugal on every reading. In the second quarter of 2026 Ryanair carried 37% of its passengers, Jet2 13%, easyJet's two airlines 16%, Transavia 8% and Eurowings 4%. The core group came to 61% and the broad group to 78%. In the third quarter of 2019 the same lists gave 57% and 69%. TAP was outside Faro's top ten in 2026; CNN Portugal, reading the same data, put it below 2%. The British market explains much of this. A Cirium count published by Postal in March 2026 put easyJet, Ryanair and Jet2 at 72.5% of UK–Portugal arrivals in 2025, and our Faro airport article found the UK at no more than 44.8% of Faro's 2025 passengers.
Porto is the Ryanair airport. Ryanair carried 35% of its passengers in the second quarter of 2026, easyJet Europe 14%, TAP 10% and Transavia France 5%. In the third quarter of 2019 TAP had 19% and the core low-cost group 49%; it is now 54%, and 59% on the broad count. Ryanair says it keeps 12 aircraft at Porto and carries about 5.7 million passengers a year there, roughly a third of the airport's 16.9 million. A city council survey of 1,751 visitors in spring 2025 found 30% had flown Ryanair, 16% TAP, 11% easyJet and 9% United.
Funchal changed most. The core low-cost share rose from 24% in the third quarter of 2019 to 45% in the second quarter of 2026, and the broad share from 31% to 54%. easyJet Europe and TAP were level at 18% each, Ryanair had 15%, easyJet's British airline 6%, Jet2 5% and Wizz Air 4%. easyJet had already overtaken TAP at Funchal in the third quarter of 2025, 18% to 17%. This is the airport that grew 67.8% between 2019 and 2025, and most of that growth was low-cost capacity, as set out in our Madeira airport article.
Ponta Delgada went the other way. Ryanair carried 24% of its passengers in the fourth quarter of 2019 and 10% in the third quarter of 2025. After its last Azores flight at the end of March 2026, the second-quarter list shows SATA Internacional at 46%, SATA Air Açores at 28% and TAP at 17%. Low-cost airlines are effectively gone, and Ponta Delgada's passengers fell 12.9% in the quarter. easyJet left the Azores in 2017 and told ECO in November 2025 it had no plans to return. The consequences for routes and fares are covered in our Azores air-access article.
Lisbon barely moved. The core group had 18% in the third quarter of 2019, 25% in the fourth quarter of 2023 and 22% in the second quarter of 2026, with Ryanair at 10%, easyJet's two airlines at 10% and Transavia France at 2%. TAP fell from 50% to 44% over the same period, while Lufthansa, KLM, Iberia and Vueling each held 1–2%. Weighted by passengers, Lisbon carries about a quarter of Portugal's low-cost traffic in the five-airport total although it handles almost half of all passengers (derived).
TAP, Ryanair and easyJet: who is biggest
TAP is still Portugal's largest airline by passengers at Portuguese airports. ANAC's August 2026 newsletter counted 1,651,931 TAP passengers, 1,409,989 for Ryanair, 629,296 for easyJet Europe and 280,293 for easyJet's British airline. Transavia France (218,623) and Jet2 (217,143) followed, ahead of SATA Internacional, Lufthansa and Vueling. Ryanair grew 5.1% on August 2025 and Jet2 24.7%, while TAP fell 1.4% and easyJet Europe 2.5%.
Ryanair has called itself Portugal's number one airline since 2022. On ANAC's counts that was true only in July and August 2020, when TAP was grounded by the pandemic. The gap is narrowing, though. Comparing August with August, TAP carried 5.3% fewer passengers in 2026 than in 2019 and Ryanair 36.9% more; easyJet's two airlines grew 43.2% (derived). On the airport-sum basis TAP's share fell from 26.9% to 20.7% and the core low-cost group's rose from 29.9% to 33.5%. Our TAP privatisation explainer covers why TAP shrank its network after 2020.
Season changes the picture more than any trend. ECO's calculation for the fourth quarter of 2019 gave TAP 35.9%, nine points more than in August of that year, because low-cost leisure capacity is cut in winter and TAP's Lisbon hub flies all year. Any comparison of airline shares has to use the same months.
The airlines' own annual figures are self-reported and not audited by any Portuguese body. Ryanair said in January 2026 that it would carry more than 14 million passengers to and from Portugal in 2026, up 4%, on 160 summer routes. It had said "about 13 million" in February 2025 and "14 million expected" in September 2025. Fourteen million is 19.0% of the 73.75 million passengers INE counted at Portuguese airports in 2025 (derived), consistent with ANAC's August figure of 17.7–19.5%. easyJet reported more than 10.5 million Portuguese passengers in its 2025 financial year on 11.4 million seats, a 92% load factor, and described itself as third in the Portuguese market. TAP carried 16.7 million passengers across its whole network in 2025, a figure that includes Lisbon–Brazil and Lisbon–US flights and is not comparable with airport counts.
Where the aircraft are based
An airline's base decides which airport gets early-morning departures, winter flying and local jobs. Ryanair and easyJet are the only low-cost airlines with aircraft based in Portugal. Transavia, Jet2, Wizz Air, Vueling, Volotea, Eurowings and Norwegian fly in from bases elsewhere. Transavia's latest Portuguese news is a Brussels–Porto route from December 2026, not a Portuguese base.
| Airline | Lisbon | Porto | Faro | Funchal | Ponta Delgada |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryanair | ≈4 (derived; 4 in 2022) | 12 | 12 (summer 2026) | 2–3 (contested) | None; no flights since 29 Mar 2026 |
| easyJet | 9 | 7 | 4 (summer only) | None | None (left 2017) |
| Transavia, Jet2, Wizz Air, Vueling, Volotea, Eurowings, Norwegian | None | None | None | None | None |
Ryanair's Lisbon base is the one that has not grown. Ryanair cut it from 7 aircraft to 4 in 2022 because of slot limits, its own 2025 totals imply about 4 still (derived), and in January 2026 Ryanair announced "no growth" at Lisbon for summer 2026, describing the airport as artificially limited. easyJet went the other way at Lisbon because of a remedy: under the 2021 state-aid decision TAP gave up 18 daily slots, and the Commission awarded them to easyJet, which now bases 9 aircraft there. easyJet's Portuguese head puts its Lisbon share at "around 15% at most"; ANAC's second-quarter list gives 10%.
The second tier: Jet2, Transavia, Vueling and Wizz Air
Behind Ryanair and easyJet, the low-cost market splits by country of origin. Transavia's French and Dutch airlines together carried 355,996 passengers in August 2026, more than any other low-cost group after the big two. Transavia France says Portugal is its largest market and that it holds about 35% of France–Portugal links, a market shaped by the Portuguese diaspora in France. Jet2 is a British leisure airline with no Portuguese base, yet it carried 13% of Faro's passengers in the second quarter of 2026 and grew 24.7% nationally in August. Vueling links Lisbon and Porto with Barcelona and other Spanish cities, and Eurowings carries German traffic to Faro and Porto.
Wizz Air is the newest. It opened Porto–Bucharest and Porto–Katowice in summer 2026 and reached 4% of Funchal's passengers, but it has no Portuguese base. Volotea, Norwegian and SmartWings each added Porto routes in 2026 without reaching any top-ten list. Their passengers are missing from every share in this article, which is why the figures here are lower bounds.
Long-haul low-cost barely exists in Portugal. WestJet, a Canadian airline with low-cost origins, flies Toronto–Ponta Delgada and announced Halifax–Lisbon for 2026, subject to government approval. JetBlue told the US Department of Transportation in August 2025 that its Lisbon slot requests had been rejected repeatedly since 2023 and now reaches Lisbon only through a TAP codeshare. No low-cost airline serves Portugal from Brazil.
Do airport charges explain the map?
ANA's report on regulated charges for 2025, published in June 2026, gives the revenue actually collected per passenger. Lisbon airport collected €15.35 on 36,126,902 passengers. Porto collected €8.62, Faro €8.59, the two Madeira airports €13.44 and the four Azores airports €8.07. The figure of €14.59 often quoted for Lisbon, including in two of our own articles, is the average for ANA's Lisbon group, which also contains Madeira, the Azores and Beja.
Three of the five airports fit a simple story. The two cheapest mainland airports, Porto and Faro, have low-cost shares of 59% and 78%, and the most expensive, Lisbon, has 24%. Lisbon's ceiling is set by slots as much as price: the runway is declared at 38 movements an hour, airlines asked for 164,000 summer 2026 slots and got about 147,000, and the first step to 40 movements needs works that start in 2027. Our Lisbon capacity analysis has the slot and punctuality data.
The other two airports break the story. Funchal is the second most expensive airport in ANA's network and its low-cost share nearly doubled. Ponta Delgada is the cheapest and lost Ryanair altogether. Ryanair blamed charges "up 35% since Covid", air-navigation fees "up 120%", Portugal's €2 carbon tax and the EU emissions trading system. The government replied that ANA's Azores charge had been frozen at €8.14 since 2024 and NAV's terminal navigation rate had fallen to €163.30, and said Ryanair had received "tens of millions" in route incentives. The €2 tax does not apply to flights to the Azores or Madeira, although it may apply on departures from them to foreign airports. The charge data do not support Ryanair's explanation, and our Azores articles found that Azores demand was already falling before the announcement.
Charges are rising slowly. ANAC approved increases of 0.65% at Lisbon and 2.40% at Porto and Faro for 2026, and ANA proposed 0.67%, 3.77% and 3.79% for 2027, with Madeira and the Azores unchanged. The big step was 2024, when ANA's proposal averaged +14.55% and Ryanair cut its Madeira base to one aircraft in response. It restored the second aircraft in 2025.
Portugal against Spain, Italy and Europe
The comparisons use different bases, so they show size, not precise gaps. Turespaña counts low-cost airlines' share of international arrivals from Aena records: 59.2% in 2025 (66,108,695 of 111,737,750 passengers) and 60.6% in January–July 2026. Italy's ENAC counts all passengers and gave low-cost airlines 63% in 2025. Eurocontrol counts flights across its whole area and found low-cost airlines at 35.4% in 2025, overtaking mainline carriers (34.7%) for the first time. Eurocontrol does not publish a figure for Portugal.
The Spanish regional split is the useful comparison. Low-cost airlines carried 80.9% of international arrivals in the Valencia region in 2025, 73.9% in Andalusia, 69.9% in the Balearics and 61.4% in the Canaries, but only 21.5% in Madrid. Faro's 78% sits between Valencia and Andalusia. Lisbon's 24%, on an all-passenger basis, is close to Madrid's. Portugal's national figure is lower than Spain's because one hub carries half its traffic, where Spain has Madrid and Barcelona plus a dozen leisure airports.
Earlier figures show how far Portugal has moved. A 2008 study for Madeira's chamber of commerce put low-cost airlines at 28.2% of Portuguese passengers in the first quarter of 2008 and 10.6% at Funchal. ANA said in 2007 that low-cost airlines carried 27% of national traffic, without giving the period. On the broad definition the five-airport share is now about 43%, and Funchal's is 54%.
Ten claims, tested
The panel below tests ten figures about low-cost flying in Portugal. Four come from our own files, including the claim that started this article: that ANAC stopped publishing airline shares in 2021.
What comes next
Three things could move the shares in 2027. The first is Lisbon's slot ceiling. Works for the step from 38 to 40 movements an hour start in 2027, and the Lufthansa–TAP deal could add a slot remedy once the EU review starts after signing, expected by the end of 2026, with closing in early or mid-2028. No remedy has been offered. The second is Ryanair's winter cut. In September 2026 it lowered its group target for the year to March 2027 from 216 million to 214 million passengers to limit fuel costs, without saying how much falls on Portugal. Its Faro–Porto and Faro–Berlin routes end on 24 October 2026, and it has announced three new Porto routes for summer 2027. The third is easyJet's Faro base, which now operates only in summer; easyJet says it is looking for viable winter options.
What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts
Travelers. Outside Lisbon, the cheapest flight to Portugal is usually on Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2 or Transavia, and at Faro and Porto those airlines carry most passengers. Lisbon has the most network flights and connections, but its slot shortage limits low-cost seats and its departures were the least punctual of Europe's large airports in 2025. For the Algarve, flying into Faro directly is usually cheaper and quicker than routing through Lisbon; our Algarve travel guide covers the transfers. For the Azores there is no low-cost airline from the mainland in 2026, so compare TAP and Azores Airlines fares early.
Tourism businesses and investors. Porto, Faro and Funchal depend on two airlines for most of their low-cost seats. Ryanair alone carried 35–37% of Porto's and Faro's passengers in spring 2026, and the Azores showed in 2026 what happens when one such airline leaves: Ryanair's exit preceded a 12.9% fall in Ponta Delgada passengers in the second quarter. A hotel or tour business in those regions should track Ryanair's and easyJet's base announcements, ANA's annual charge proposals each September and ANAC's approvals each December. Lisbon is the reverse case. It depends on TAP for 44% of passengers, and that share now hinges on Lufthansa's plans. The thresholds that would change this assessment are a low-cost share at Lisbon above 30%, which would signal released slots, or a Ryanair base cut at Porto or Faro.
Journalists and analysts. Citable figures: low-cost share in the second quarter of 2026 of 78% at Faro, 59% at Porto, 54% at Funchal, 24% at Lisbon and about 1% at Ponta Delgada (ANAC bulletin n.º 70, summed by us, lower bounds); TAP 1,651,931 and Ryanair 1,409,989 passengers in August 2026 (ANAC); Spain 59.2% (Turespaña, international arrivals, 2025); charges collected per passenger in 2025 of €15.35 at Lisbon, €8.62 at Porto and €8.59 at Faro (ANA). Do not cite: "no airline data since 2021", "Ryanair is Portugal's largest airline", "€14.59 at Lisbon" for the airport alone, or "more than 90% of UK–Portugal flights are low-cost". This article adds a new recurring finding to the series: Portugal publishes airline-level traffic data every quarter, and almost nobody uses it.
Data & sources
Period covered: ANAC airport rankings Q3 2019–Q2 2026 and monthly Aug 2019/Aug 2026; Eurostat 2015–2025; schedules to summer 2027
- ANAC, Boletim Estatístico Trimestral n.º 70 (Q2 2026) · Top-10 airlines by passengers and movements at each Portuguese airport, April–June 2026, and airport passenger totals; published August 2026. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ANAC, Boletins Estatísticos Trimestrais (index, n.º 1–70) · Quarterly airport airline rankings since Q1 2009; used for Q3 2019 (n.º 43), Q4 2023 (n.º 60) and Q3 2025 (n.º 67). Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ANAC, traffic newsletter August 2026 · National top-15 airlines by passengers, year-on-year change, airport and national totals. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ANAC, traffic newsletter August 2019 · Pre-pandemic baseline of national airline passenger counts. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ECO, airline shares Q4 2021 and Q4 2019 · ECO's national share calculations from ANAC airport data: TAP, Ryanair, easyJet, Transavia. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- CNN Portugal, TAP airport shares (15 Oct 2026) · Independent reading of ANAC Q2 2026 shares at Porto, Funchal, Ponta Delgada and Faro. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ANA, Relatório da receita com as taxas reguladas 2025 · Regulated charges collected per terminal passenger by airport and group, 2025; published June 2026. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- Turespaña, international air passengers, December 2025 · Low-cost share of Spain's international arrivals, 2025, and by region. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- Turespaña, international air passengers, July 2026 · Low-cost share January–July 2026 (60.6%). Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ENAC via Sky TG24 (20 Jan 2026) · Italy: low-cost airlines 63% of passengers in 2025. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- EUROCONTROL, European Aviation Overview 2025 review · Low-cost share of flights in the EUROCONTROL area, 35.4% in 2025, and operator rankings. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- Eurostat, HICP passenger transport by air (prc_hicp_aind) · Annual air-fare index for Portugal and the EU, 2015–2025. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- Eurostat, avia_paoa · Passengers by airport 2019 and 2025 for growth and the five-airport totals. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- Câmara Municipal do Porto, tourist profile study 2025 · Visitor survey (n = 1,751): airline used and spending per night. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- Ryanair, summer 2026 Portugal schedule (28 Jan 2026) · Self-reported passengers, routes and based aircraft in Portugal. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
- ECO, easyJet Faro base (17 Jun 2026) · easyJet based aircraft at Lisbon, Porto and Faro; Faro seats and seasonality. Accessed 20 Oct 2026.
Methodology
Airline shares come from ANAC's quarterly statistical bulletins (n.º 43 for Q3 2019, n.º 60 for Q4 2023, n.º 67 for Q3 2025 and n.º 70 for Q2 2026), which list the ten largest airlines by passengers at each airport, and from ANAC's monthly traffic newsletters for August 2019 and August 2026, which rank the 15 largest airlines nationally. Earlier national shares are the calculations of ECO and PressTUR from ANAC data. Airport totals and growth are from Eurostat (avia_paoa) and INE via the press; charges from ANA's 2025 regulated-charges report; comparisons from Turespaña, ENAC and EUROCONTROL; fares from Eurostat's HICP; airline bases and passenger totals from Ryanair and easyJet statements reported by ECO, RTP, Postal and Times of Madeira; the visitor survey from Câmara Municipal do Porto.
Limitations: (1) no Portuguese source classifies airlines as low-cost, so every share is a sum of named airlines; (2) ANAC lists only the top ten per airport and rounds to whole percentages, so the sums are lower bounds; (3) ANAC does not state whether national airline counts include domestic passengers at both ends, so national shares are shown on two denominators; (4) the quarterly comparisons mix seasons (Q3 2019, Q4 2023, Q3 2025, Q2 2026) and airline shares change with the season; (5) ANAC's PDF text layers are garbled by machine reading, and the Lisbon Q2 2026 list rests on a single reading; (6) Spain's and Italy's figures use different bases from Portugal's.
Where sources conflicted we show both values and the basis of each. Ten circulating claims were tested against primary data and given verdicts in table 3; four of them came from our own earlier files and research brief and are corrected here. Self-reported airline figures are labelled as such and every share or ratio we calculated is marked derived.
Notes on the data
No official low-cost share exists for Portugal or for any Portuguese airport; all low-cost shares in this article are our sums of ANAC's named-airline rankings and are lower bounds. Eurostat collects airline identity but publishes it anonymised (code 888). EUROCONTROL publishes no Portugal-level low-cost share. Madeira's regional air-transport observatory publishes seat shares by origin market only, and its 2026 bulletins were not reachable; the Azores statistics office publishes no airline split.
Contested figures: national shares for August 2026 are 33.5% (airport-sum basis) or 37.0% (national basis) for Ryanair, easyJet and Transavia, and 40.1% or 44.1% on the broad definition. Ryanair's 2025 Portugal passengers were stated as "about 13 million" (Feb 2025) and "14 million" (Sep 2025). Ryanair's winter 2025 aircraft additions went to Madeira and Faro according to Ryanair and to Porto and Funchal according to Times of Madeira. easyJet's Lisbon share is "around 15% at most" in its own words and 10% on ANAC's list. EUROCONTROL's 2025 low-cost share appears as both 35.4% and 35.2% in the same report. Spain's 2024 share is 60.9% in the provisional note and about 58.4% implied by the 2025 note's growth rates.
Failed claims: "no airline share data since 2021" (our files; false); "Ryanair 21.3% and easyJet 12.7% in Q2 2021" attributed to ANAC (a PressTUR calculation); "Ryanair is Portugal's No. 1 airline" (not supported); "€14.59 per Lisbon passenger" (the Lisbon group, not the airport; Lisbon alone €15.35); "more than 90% of UK–Portugal flights are low-cost" (Cirium gives about 73%); "Spain about 57% low-cost in 2025" (our brief; that is December 2025; the year was 59.2%). The plan title named Transavia as the third low-cost airline: on August 2026 data it is, with 355,996 passengers, but Jet2 is larger at Faro.
Derived figures: every low-cost sum, the five-airport weighted shares (37.6% and 43.4%), the August 2019 and August 2026 shares, Ryanair's implied 19.0% of 2025 airport passengers, Lisbon's share of low-cost traffic, Ryanair's Lisbon aircraft (about 4), airport growth since 2019 and the HICP changes since 2019 are our calculations.
Self-reported figures: Ryanair's and easyJet's passenger totals, routes, based aircraft and seat counts; Transavia's 35% of France–Portugal links; the Porto visitor survey is a sample survey of spring 2025.
Frequently asked questions
What share of flights in Portugal are low-cost?
No official figure exists, because no Portuguese body classifies airlines as low-cost. Summing ANAC's airport rankings, low-cost airlines carried about 43% of passengers at the five largest airports in April–June 2026, and about 40% of national passengers in August 2026 on the airport-sum basis. Both are lower bounds because smaller airlines are not listed.
Which low-cost airlines fly to Portugal?
Ryanair and easyJet are the largest, followed by Transavia, Jet2, Vueling, Eurowings and Wizz Air. Volotea, Norwegian, SmartWings and TUI also fly to Porto or Faro. Only Ryanair and easyJet base aircraft in Portugal.
Is Ryanair bigger than TAP in Portugal?
No. ANAC counted 1,651,931 TAP passengers and 1,409,989 Ryanair passengers at Portuguese airports in August 2026. Ryanair is the largest airline at Porto (35%) and Faro (37%), and the gap is narrowing: since August 2019 Ryanair has grown 36.9% and TAP has shrunk 5.3% (derived).
Which Portuguese airport depends most on low-cost airlines?
Faro. Low-cost airlines carried at least 78% of its passengers in the second quarter of 2026, with Ryanair at 37% and Jet2 at 13%. Porto (59%) and Funchal (54%) follow. Lisbon is the least low-cost mainland airport at about 24%.
Where are Ryanair and easyJet based in Portugal?
Ryanair bases aircraft at Porto (12), Faro (12 in summer 2026), Lisbon (about 4) and Funchal (2–3), according to its own statements. easyJet bases 9 aircraft at Lisbon, 7 at Porto and 4 at Faro from April to October. Ryanair closed its Ponta Delgada base in 2023–24 and stopped flying to the Azores on 29 March 2026.
Do low-cost airlines fly to Madeira and the Azores?
Madeira, yes: easyJet and TAP each carried 18% of Funchal's passengers in spring 2026 and Ryanair 15%, with Jet2, Transavia and Wizz Air also flying. The Azores have had no low-cost airline from mainland Portugal since Ryanair left in March 2026; easyJet left in 2017. WestJet flies Toronto–Ponta Delgada in summer.
Does Lisbon airport have room for more low-cost flights?
Very little. Lisbon is declared at 38 movements an hour, airlines asked for about 164,000 summer 2026 slots and received about 147,000, and works to reach 40 an hour start in 2027. Ryanair froze its Lisbon growth for 2026. A slot remedy from the Lufthansa–TAP deal is possible but none has been offered.
Are flights to Portugal getting more expensive?
Slowly. Eurostat's index of air fares bought by Portuguese residents rose 1.7% in 2025 and stood 4.0% above a year earlier in September 2026. Since 2019 it has risen 15.6%, against 40.0% for the EU (derived). Airport charges at Porto and Faro rose 2.4% in 2026 and ANA has proposed about 3.8% for 2027.
How does Portugal compare with Spain on low-cost flights?
Spain's tourism agency counts 59.2% of 2025 international air arrivals on low-cost airlines, and 80.9% in the Valencia region, but 21.5% in Madrid. Portugal's Faro (78%) is close to Spain's leisure regions and Lisbon (24%) close to Madrid. The bases differ: Spain counts international arrivals, ANAC all passengers.