Portugal Airport Strikes To Disrupt Flights December 5 To 8

Published on Dec 4, 2025, 10:44 am CST

8 min read

Key points

Portugal airport strike December 2025 windows include December 5 to 8, December 12 to 15, and December 19 2025 to January 2 2026 at major hubs
Ground handling staff at Menzies Aviation are in a pay and conditions dispute that covers all national airports and many international airlines using Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Madeira, and Azores gateways
Minimum service rulings should keep mainland to island links operating but can still produce long check in queues, baggage delays, and scattered cancellations on strike days
The December strike pattern overlaps a separate general strike on December 11 2025 that is expected to ground most flights and further complicate connecting itineraries
Travelers using Lisbon as a transatlantic hub should avoid tight connections on strike weekends, favor carry on bags, and consider moving non essential trips off the listed dates

Impact

Where Impacts Are Most Likely: Expect the heaviest friction at Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport, Porto Francisco Sa Carneiro Airport, Faro Gago Coutinho International Airport, Cristiano Ronaldo Madeira International Airport, and key Azores gateways on listed strike dates
Best Times To Fly: Safer options are departures outside the December 5 to 8, 12 to 15, and 19 to January 2 windows, or early morning and off peak flights that airlines prioritize under minimum service plans
Connections And Misconnect Risk: Avoid separate tickets and short inbound to Schengen or long haul connections via Portuguese hubs on strike days, and build overnight buffers around complex itineraries
Onward Travel And Changes: Assume slower baggage delivery and occasional retimes, keep apps and email alerts active, and be ready to accept proactive rebooking or rerouting offers
What Travelers Should Do Now: Map your itinerary against the strike calendar, move flexible trips off high risk days, shift to hand luggage where possible, and review EU air passenger rights and airline waivers in advance

Some of the links and widgets on this page are affiliates, which means we may earn a commission if you use them, at no extra cost to you.

Portugal airport strike December 2025 windows start on Friday December 5 and will keep returning through early January, with fresh walkouts by ground handling staff at Lisbon Humberto Delgado Airport (LIS), Porto Francisco Sa Carneiro Airport (OPO), Faro Gago Coutinho International Airport (FAO), and island gateways in Madeira and the Azores. The action targets Menzies Aviation, the main handling provider at several Portuguese airports, and hits many international airlines that rely on its staff for check in, ramp work, and baggage. For travelers, that means a higher baseline risk of queues, late bags, and scattered cancellations on strike days, not a simple one day shutdown.

In plain terms, the current strike notice sets up a rolling pattern that covers December 5 to 8, December 12 to 15, and a continuous holiday window from December 19 2025 to January 2 2026 at Portuguese airports, layered on top of a separate nationwide general strike that is expected to ground most flights on December 11.

What Is Actually Happening At Portuguese Airports

The industrial dispute centers on Menzies Aviation, formerly Groundforce, whose workers handle passenger check in, boarding, ramp services, and baggage for a long list of foreign and local airlines at national airports. Unions led by the Metallurgical and Related Industries Union, SIMA, filed a strike notice that runs from September 3 2025 through January 2 2026, concentrating stoppages on long weekends and peak holiday dates.

Media and advisory summaries, including guidance for residents and visitors, highlight a December calendar of three main blocks. The first covers Friday December 5 through Monday December 8, the second runs Friday December 12 through Monday December 15, and the third runs from Friday December 19 straight through Friday January 2, covering both Christmas and New Year travel. While earlier legal rulings on minimum services briefly led some outlets to report that the wider September to January plan had been cancelled, later notices and updated coverage, including Adept Traveler's own November overview, confirm that December handling strikes remain baked into the operating picture, albeit under tight minimum service rules.

The same Menzies framework covers all national airports, with explicit references to Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Madeira's Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport (FNC), and multiple Azores gateways. Because Menzies holds an estimated sixty five percent share of Portuguese ground and air cargo services and contracts with many major airlines, including flag carrier TAP Air Portugal, the potential for ripple effects on international routes is real, even when only part of the workforce participates.

How Minimum Services Shape The Risk

Portugal's arbitration tribunal has already imposed minimum service levels on these strikes, requiring full protection for flights between mainland Portugal and the islands and a significant slice of international services. In practice, that means aircraft still move and timetables on paper may look fairly normal, especially on protected routes to Madeira and the Azores, but critical handling functions run with thinner staffing.

During earlier strike windows in summer and autumn, Lisbon saw dozens of cancellations and visible baggage backlogs, while other airports reported longer check in lines and delayed bags even when most flights still operated. Menzies, for its part, has repeatedly stressed that it has contingency plans in place and that it will respect both minimum service rulings and worker rights, but unions argue that base pay below the national minimum wage, unpaid night work, and contested parking benefits remain unresolved.

For travelers, the operational picture is simple. Domestic flights to and from the islands are relatively safe but may run with slower boarding and baggage. International services face a mix of retimes, occasional cancellations, and delayed bags, especially on airlines heavily dependent on Menzies for ground work.

Overlap With The December 11 General Strike

The handling strikes do not exist in a vacuum. On Thursday December 11 2025, Portugal will see its first joint nationwide general strike in more than a decade, backed by the main union confederations CGTP and UGT and by cabin crew union SNPVAC, which represents around five thousand staff at TAP, Azores Airlines, Ryanair, and easyJet.

Adept Traveler's separate coverage of the Portugal general strike makes clear that most flights at Lisbon, Porto, and Faro are expected to be grounded that day, with only narrow minimum services operating and many new bookings already blocked. That creates a cluster of strike risk, with handling walkouts on December 5 to 8 and December 12 to 15 bracketing a near shut down of flying on December 11. Anyone planning multi country itineraries that route through Portugal in that week needs to build generous buffers, avoid same day rail or cruise connections, and consider rerouting through Spain, France, or the Netherlands where practical.

Who Is Most Exposed

Three groups face the greatest practical risk from the December handling strikes.

First, travelers using Lisbon as a transatlantic hub, for example itineraries between North America and secondary European or African destinations, are vulnerable to missed onward flights if arrival and departure banks fall inside strike windows. Long haul flights operate with less slack and can be harder to rebook, especially around Christmas and New Year.

Second, short haul passengers on airlines that contract Menzies at Lisbon, Porto, Faro, Madeira, and Azores airports can see normal schedules but abnormal ground conditions. That means check in queues that spill into concourses, bags that miss flights and follow on later services, and longer waits at arrival belts.

Third, island travelers connecting through mainland hubs on separate tickets, or with tight connection times under two hours, face a compounded risk, since minimum services protect core mainland to island links but do not guarantee that an inbound long haul leg will arrive on time or that checked bags will make the transfer.

Practical Planning For December And New Year Trips

If you already hold tickets through any Portuguese airport between December 5 and January 2, the first step is to map your itinerary against the published strike calendar. If any leg touches December 5 to 8, 12 to 15, or the December 19 to January 2 holiday stretch, treat it as higher risk, and if it falls on December 11 itself, treat it as very high risk because of the general strike.

Where dates are flexible, the cleanest move is to slide trips away from those weekends and from December 11 altogether. Shifting a departure to December 9 or 10, or pushing a return into the first week of January after the strike period ends, can dramatically reduce the chance of major disruption.

Where travel cannot move, the next best lever is itinerary design. Avoid separate tickets that rely on tight connections through Lisbon, Porto, or Faro during strike windows, especially when linking a long haul arrival to a Schengen or island departure. Aim for at least three hours between flights, or better yet, an overnight stop if that connection bridges strike days or crosses December 11.

Baggage strategy matters as much as schedule. Hand luggage only is the ideal choice during handling strikes, particularly if your trip involves one of the island gateways, where a delayed bag can take days to follow. If checked baggage is unavoidable, pack medications, chargers, essential clothing, and any irreplaceable items in your carry on.

Finally, monitor airline alerts and airport advisories closely in the week before departure. Many carriers have already used limited fee free change waivers during earlier strike rounds and may extend similar flexibility into the December windows, especially for December 11 and the surrounding days. Accepting a proactive rebooking offer to a safer date is usually better than waiting for a same day scramble at the check in desk.

How This Fits Into The Wider European Strike Picture

Portugal's December airport handling strikes sit inside a broader European labor wave that includes Spanish baggage strikes on Ryanair related routes and multiple Italian transport actions affecting rail and airport workers. For travelers building multi country itineraries across Iberia and southern Europe, it now makes sense to treat strike risk as a structural factor in planning, not a surprise exception.

Within Adept Traveler's own coverage, this piece should be read alongside the earlier November deep dive on Portugal ground handling strikes and the dedicated analysis of Portugal's December 11 general strike, which together map the full pattern from intermittent friction to near total shutdown.