When it comes on Brazilian’s, they don’t simply sit back and watch, the same view is seen yesterday where Brazilain aviation groups unite to defend Brazil’s largest Bizav airport. This view is created when the state’s newly elected governor passed a proposal to close the Bizav airport airfield and turn it into a
park,with the runway being repurposed for basketball, soccer, and other sports. Campo de Marte, which is near the São Paulo city-center, is Brazil’s busiest general aviation airport and ranks eighth in the country’s airports overall, with 70,000 operations last year. In order to defend this proposal, Brazilian aviation associations filled an auditorium at Sao Paulo Campo de Marte Airport on Monday evening to forge a common front against the proposal.
Aldermen stated that “The cause is more than just, more than noble, and I’ll speak to everyone from to the president of the republic,” vowed the state’s newly elected senator, Sergio Olimpio Gomes, better known as Major Olimpio, a title earned from his state police career. State legislator Oscar Castello Branco,
another of the politicians forming the “legislative front” to defend the airport, echoed the sentiment. Jorge Bittar, president of Brazilian air taxi association ABTaer, presented the paperwork outlining this position.
Flávio Pires, CEO of Brazilian business and general aviation association ABAG, opened the meeting laying out
its purpose of the formation of a broad coalition of associations and providing a more technical defense in favor of the airfield. He refuted the governor’s professed safety concerns and added that the airport has been the country’s fifth-busiest by number of operations and is likely to move up again as the economy recovers since “business aviation swings are wider than those for commercial aviation.”
Pires also looked to the future, pointing out that emerging technologies such as urban aviation mobility solutions, expected as early as 2023, will require a large urban airport or heliport for support. Every few years, a proposal is made to close the airport—“Save Campo de Marte” was the theme of LABACE 2017. Olimpio Gomes the senator said that While this has been done under a variety of pretexts, the underlying motive is always the same real estate interests want to fill the approach path area with high-rises. People are always saying, ‘Remove wholesale market, remove Campo de Marte,; because they are relatively small areas,
and people stand to make millions.
