AENA Brasil’s investments to pave way for international route expansion at its Brazilian airports

AENA Brasil, the subsidiary of the giant Spanish airport operator, has commenced operation of Rio de Janeiro Galeão International Airport, its 18th in the country and the third in a series of concessions in which it has engaged since 2019 in Brazil.

As such AENA Brasil has stepped into a political battle which has seen the country's President, supported by powerful local politicians, favour Galeão over the domestic and more 'downtown' Santos Dumont airport by implementing flight caps there and later revoking passenger capacity increases.

Consequently Galeão, which had lost traffic heavily for numerous reasons, has recovered while Santos Dumont has stalled badly. Santos Dumont remains in the domain of state operator Infraero, at least for now, and is by far its main asset, until it is privatised, which seems inevitable.

In the interim Brazil could get a new right wing President in an election run-off on 25-Oct-2026, which could change everything again although if the challenger wins he would be expected to support continuing privatisation (and Santos Dumont is easily the biggest prize still on offer).

However, the main drift of this report is AENA Brasil's intention to encourage enhanced route networks at its airports, which could include domestic-to-international services to new destinations, mainly at its three main airports of Galeão, São Paulo Congonhas and Recife, and which is an example of airport privatisation across multiple airports working to the benefit of the traveller.