Brazil lack airport facilities for 2014 World Cup: association

Brazil lacks the necessary airport facilities to host the 500,000-plus tourists expected to head to the country for the 2014 World Cup of football, a grouping of private aircraft owners said Wednesday.

“Our airport infrastructure can't handle the 2014 World Cup,” the vice president of the Brazilian General Aviation Association, Adalberto Febeliano, told a media conference.

He explained that the 500,000 figure was based on tourist projections for the 2010 World Cup to be held in South Africa. The number of football fans heading to Brazil in 2014 would likely be bigger, he said.

Each of the fans in Brazil will take between six and 14 flights to catch the games played in various cities, generating an extra four million passenger movements through airports during the tournament, he said.

That would effectively double the number of passenger movements normally recorded per month in Brazil, and demands a big investment in expanding airport facilities, Febeliano said.

“We have to find urgent solutions for the obstacles in the sector, such as the saturated Sao Paulo airports and the operation of other air terminals that exceed their capacity,” he said.