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Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport — also known as Madeira Airport, Funchal Airport, and formerly Santa Catarina Airport — is an international airport in the civil parish of Santa Cruz in the Portuguese archipelago and autonomous region of Madeira. The airport is located east-northeast of the regional capital, Funchal, after which it is sometimes informally named. It mostly hosts flights to European metropolitan destinations due to Madeira's importance as a leisure destination, and is pivotal in the movement of cargo in and out of the archipelago of Madeira. It is the fourth-busiest airport in Portugal, although in January 2025 it had surpassed Faro.[1] The movement of passengers at national airports continues to reach monthly highs - January 2025, 'Statistics Portugal', Retrieved 15.03.2025.[2] Madeira airport surpasses Faro, The Portugal News, Retrieved 15.03.2025. The airport is named after footballer and Madeiran native Cristiano Ronaldo. During its renaming ceremony in 2017, the airport drew media notoriety for an infamous bust of Ronaldo unveiled at the ceremony, now replaced.
The airport is considered one of the most peculiarly perilous airports in the world due to its location and its spectacular runway construction. It received the Outstanding Structure Award in 2004 from the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering. The History Channel programme Most Extreme Airports ranked it as the ninth most dangerous airport in the world and the third most dangerous in Europe. Pilots must undergo additional training to land at the airport.
In 1972, the popularity of visiting the island of Madeira increased, so the runway was extended to allow modern and larger aircraft to land. Considered the Kai Tak of Europe because of its singular approach to runway 06 (now runway 05), the decision was made to extend the existing runway instead of building a new one. The runway was extended to , with the extension inaugurated on 1 February 1986 by the then president of the Portuguese Republic António Ramalho Eanes. In the meantime, a new terminal was built at the airport in 1973, handling 500,000 passengers.[3] A study on the economic impact of the 2001 Madeira Airport enlargement, Almeida, António; Barros, Vera, Associação Portuguesa para o Desenvolvimento Regional, 09.12.2022.
However, as demand for tourism continued to grow, the runway was extended further. This new extension resulted in the heading of the runway being slightly adjusted and the designation being changed to 05/23. The newly extended runway—now long—and terminal were inaugurated on 6 October 2002, and to mark the occasion, an Air Atlanta Icelandic Boeing 747-200, registration TF-ABA, landed at the airport. Although this was a rare event, some TAP Air Portugal flights on the Lisbon-Caracas-Lisbon route used to have scheduled stops at Madeira with Airbus A330-200 widebody aircraft.
Neither the bust nor the name change were unanimous, actually far from a consensus, as the former was ridiculed by Saturday Night Live's character Cecilia Giminez, portrayed by comedian and actress Kate McKinnon, with the latter being subject to much debate and controversy locally by politicians and citizens, who even started a petition against the move.
A year later, sports website Bleacher Report commissioned sculptor Emanuel Santos to create another bust. However, this bust was never used; instead, a new one was made by a Spanish sculptor and shown to the public on 15 June 2018.
In 2000, the runway was again extended, this time to . As Land reclamation was not a realistic option, the extension was built on a platform, partly over the ocean, supported by 180 columns, each about tall. The runway extension was conducted by the Brazilian construction company Andrade Gutierrez and is recognized worldwide as one of the most difficult to achieve due to the type of terrain and orography.
Its innovative solution allowed Funchal to receive the Outstanding Structure Award in 2004 by the International Association for Bridge and Structural Engineering, which aims at recognizing the most remarkable, innovative, creative, or otherwise stimulating structure completed within the last few years.
According to Vinci Airports, the airport will "have the capacity to deal with up to 1,400 passengers per hour", and the airport's overall new layout has been designed to accommodate new stores for national and international brands alike.
The passenger screening area, under the command of Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras, increased from 7,000 sq ft (650 m2) to 16,000 sq ft (1,500 m2), with more security screening lines, while the passenger holding and verification area increased from 300 to 650 m2. The new layout has simplified the passenger experience, creating defined areas for the Schengen Area (which includes the Autonomous Region of Madeira) and non–Schengen Area passengers, and allows the airport operator to alternate these areas based on flight schedules. A new transfer hall and three new departure gates were also created as part of the project.
The renovation and investment project also accommodated the strengthening and re-profiling of the runway and taxiways, increasing the usable area by more than 16,000 sq ft (1,500 m2).
| + Busiest routes from Madeira Airport (2023)
! Rank
! City, airport
! Passengers
! % change from 2019 ! Top carriers | ||||
| 1 | Lisbon Airport | 1,351,694 | 33.9% | easyJet, TAP Air Portugal |
| 2 | Porto Airport | 626,892 | 76.7% | easyJet, TAP Air Portugal |
| 3 | Gatwick Airport | 206,505 | 20.9% | easyJet, TUI Airways |
| 4 | Manchester | 159,015 | 54.8% | easyJet, Jet2.com, TUI Airways |
| 5 | London–Stansted | 136,640 | 125.8% | Jet2.com |
| 6 | Frankfurt | 118,371 | 24.1% | Condor, Lufthansa, TUI fly Deutschland |
| 7 | Amsterdam | 102,463 | 21.2% | easyJet, Transavia, TUI fly Netherlands |
| 8 | Düsseldorf | 102,261 | 28.3% | Condor, TUI fly Deutschland |
| 9 | Warsaw Chopin | 89,097 | 105.1% | Wizz Air |
| 10 | Heathrow Airport | 87,540 | British Airways | |
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