Startup founders and government officials have been confronted with a unique flavor of first-world problem at this year’s Web Summit, Financial Times reports. The Lisbon Airport has been forced to turn some private jets away, sending flights to seek runway space at airports as far away as Badajoz, a Spanish city two hours away from Lisbon.
The issue might come with the territory. Web Summit is a technology business conference that tends to attract investors, startups and high-profile keynote speakers — this year’s conference features talks from the CEO of Qualcomm and the President of Microsoft, for example — many of whom prefer to fly private. That poses a problem for the Lisbon Airport.
“Please be advised that there is currently a shortage of private jet slots during Web Summit at Lisbon Airport (LIS) and surrounding smaller airports,” Web Summit organizers reportedly told attendees. “Lisbon Airport is experiencing difficulty managing the volume of traffic, resulting in a lack of available take-off and landing slots for all operations.”
FT writes that this kind of airport bottleneck is a first for the conference, and likely caused as much by a growing predilection for private jets as it is the larger number of attendees at this year’s Web Summit. Setting aside the environmental impact of flying private, you’d think all those brilliant minds could come up with some kind of solution beyond flying further away and driving into Portugal. Maybe a jet that hundreds of people can charter at once?
