According to the institute, of the 24.2 billion places per kilometre provided, only 23.2% were actually taken up with this ratio down 0.9% on 2013.


This performance nevertheless leaps substantially when taking into consideration international road passenger transport that returned an occupancy rate of 74.8%.


However, there were more Portuguese citizens taking to the skies with air transport rising by 9.4%, up from a 4.9% increase in 2013, with a total of 35.7 million passengers.


Of this total, Portuguese registered carriers provided a total of 16.5 million places on board, up 3.5% on 2013 while actually carrying 12.7 passengers, up 6.7% on 2013.