Zumbi dos Palmares - Maceió International Airport
Zumbi dos Palmares - Maceió International Airport
Anyone who decides to arrive in Brazil via Maceió-Zumbi dos Palmares International Airport will not regret it. In February 2020, the unit began to be managed by Aena Brasil, after the company won the concession auction of the National Civil Aviation Agency (Anac) held in 2019. Since then, a growing work has been done to humanize management which, combined with the use of state-of-the-art technology and modernization works, is bringing increasingly better results to the terminal.
With the capacity to receive just over 5 million passengers per year, Maceió-Zumbi dos Palmares International Airport was considered the best in the Northeast, in a ranking by the National Secretariat of Civil Aviation (SAC). The title is the result of the Passenger Satisfaction and Airport Performance Survey, carried out in 2020, in the 20 main air terminals in Brazil.
In March of the same year, the terminal won first place in three of the six indicators of the Aeroportos + Brasil Award, within the category of airports that process up to 5 million passengers per year. The SBMO, as it is also called, received the Most efficient X-Ray recognitions, Most efficient customs control, and More passenger services offer.
The new infrastructure provided the necessary support for the development of leisure, business and cultural tourism in the state. Maceió has received an increasingly diverse range of passengers, especially after the opening, in the 2000s, of a modern convention center, which attracts investors to events and fairs in the city.
Whatever the purpose of the visit, the public will find shops and services in the terminal, but also a portrait of what the local history and culture has to offer. Maceió Airport was named Campo dos Palmares, by Law No. 1438, of September 19, 1951, in honor of the most famous quilombo in the Americas, Quilombo dos Palmares, located in Serra da Barriga, in Alagoas. In 1999, the airport gained its current name, in honor of Zumbi dos Palmares, the greatest leader of the quilombo, a figure who still today represents the anti-racist and anti-slavery struggle.
The architecture of the building, molded in concrete and steel, has a roof in the shape of a zenith and tiles in a green tone, trying to reproduce the unique color of the local sea. When he chose the format of the light towers for the runway, the project's creator, architect Mário Aloísio Melo, from Alagoas, was inspired by the sails of the rafts that glide through the Brazilian Caribbean Sea.
Screens, sculptures and panels by artists such as Tânia Maia Pedrosa, Maria Amélia Vieira, Dalton Costa, Lula Nogueira, Rosa Piatti, Ana Maia, Rogério Gomes, Orlando Santos, Beto Normande, Bárbara Lessa, Rogério Sarmento, Marta Arruda, Sandra Neves, Reinaldo Lessa, Alex Barbosa and Satyro Marques coexist in harmony with the modernity of architectural lines.
An undoubtedly positive scenario that tends to get even better added to the experience of the Spanish company Aena, considered the largest airport operator in the world in number of passengers. The company, which manages and operates 17 terminals in the country, has been printing its brand at Maceió International Airport - Zumbi dos Palmares. Since 2022, the unit has been undergoing structural works to expand capacity and improve infrastructure. Aena Brasil is investing R$1.4 billion in the six terminals managed by the company in the Northeast — Recife (PE), Maceió (AL), João Pessoa and Campina Grande (PB), Aracaju (SE) and Juazeiro do Norte (CE) .