Belo Horizonte/Confins – Tancredo Neves International Airport , formerly called Confins International Airport is the primary international airport serving Belo Horizonte. Since 2 September 1986 the airport is named after Tancredo de Almeida Neves (1910–1985), President-elect of Brazil. It is located in the municipality of Confins, in the state of Minas Gerais. It is operated by BH Airport S.A. History The airport was built by Infraero and inaugurated in 1984. Its purpose was to lessen the congestion at Pampulha Airport, which at the time was operating at 120% of its capacity of 1.3 million passengers per year. It was expected that by 1990, passenger movement at Confins would be nearly 2 million passengers per year. However, it surpassed the 1 million passenger mark only 22 years later. Presently its maximum operational capacity is 22 million passengers per year. After its inauguration, just a small fraction of the capacity of Confins was used. This was partly due to its distance from downtown Belo Horizonte and, until recently, to the lack of satisfactory transportation alternatives for the pricey (about US$40) taxi rides. The over-crowded Pampulha Airport remained the airport of choice. In order to revert this scenario, in March 2005 the government of the state of Minas Gerais with the support of agencies of the Federal government decided to restrict Pampulha to operations of aircraft with capacity of up to 50 passengers. In the months thereafter, most operations were forced to move to Confins and the airport gained a new momentum. At that time, 130 flights were transferred from Pampulha to Confins, increasing annual passenger flow from 350,000 to around 3.0 million that year. The problems related to the distance of Confins to downtown Belo Horizonte were lessened by recent projects such as the improvement of the highway that links the city center to the airport (MG-10 highway), part of a larger project called Linha Verde (Green Line), which seeks to reduce the time needed to reach the airport. Another project called the "Industrial Airport" is underway. In this project the government will exempt tax of businesses interested in settling their operations near the airport. Its cargo facilities have a capacity of handling 18.000 tones (39.682.000 lb) and the warehouse has 6.400 m2 (68.889 ft²). The main maintenance facilities of Gol Airlines are located at this airport. On 26 April 2011 it was confirmed that in order to speed-up much needed renovation