Gloria elevator tragedy causes – too early to draw conclusions

The company responsible for the maintenance of the Gloria elevator in Lisbon said on Saturday that it was too early to draw any conclusions as to the exact causes of the tragic derailment and crash of a funicular car on Wednesday leading to the deaths of 16 people and injuries to 21.

MNTC – Serviços Técnicos de Engenharia, Lda, commonly known as MAIN,  added that after an inspection on the morning of the tragedy the elevator was considered to be in “adequate operational condition”.

“Any conclusion at this phase would be premature, but what we can confirm is that the Gloria Elevator was given an inspection on Wednesday morning when on this occasion it was considered to be in an adequate operational state”, said MNTC in a communiqué sent to the Lusa news agency over the weekend .

Portuguese officials investigating the funicular crash said that a conjoining cable which acted as stabilisers for the two passenger cars snapped despite the cable being only halfway through its 600 useable day life.

“After examining the wreckage at the site, it was immediately determined that the cable connecting the two carriages had broken”, states a statement from the national transport safety office.

Just how experienced was the maintenance company?

But initial claims that the rest of the mechanisms were performing properly have now been cast into doubt since the brakeman had tried to apply the emergency brakes but they had either failed to work or failed to stop the derailment and subsequent crash into a building in a process that took all of 50 seconds at at speed of 56Km/h.

An existing maintenance contract had terminated on August 31, but there was a contract in force with MAIN – a company whose website only has a landing page and no other workable links.

At by looking at the public contracting platform created and managed by Portuguese company Vortal it can be seen that MAIN (It was awarded a three-year maintenance contract for €1 million to service the Gloria, Lavra, Bica and Santa Justa elevators) was awarded 42 public contracts from three public competitions and direct contract awards.

Interestingly enough, the public contracts regarding the maintenance of this type of electric. systems and vehicles divided between the public transport companies Carris in Lisbon and STCP in Porto, were only a handful with all contracts starting in 2022. In the case of the elevators, Carris had outsourced the maintenance to the private company.

Just over a decade ago MAIN (MNTC) had been known as Engedra when one of its specialities had been maintaining public swimming pools and air-conditioning systems. Engedra, as a sole proprietorship, was also engaged in civil construction projects.

In 2012, it ceased to be a sole proprietorship and became a limited liability company, but only in 2022 was the corporate description of the services it offered changed to include the “…manufacture and maintenance of elevators, hoists, cable cars, escalators and moving walkways and similar conveyors, including the manufacture of accessories, parts and pieces of this equipment… the installation, repair and maintenance of elevators and escalators”.

This list of services was changed on April 14, 2022 and the announcement of the maintenance tender for the four elevators is from May 15, 2022. The tender for the maintenance of Porto’s trams dates from November 2022.

The tender provided for a total base price of €1,728,000.00 and ended up being awarded for €995,515.20.

MNTC was preferred to other entities such as Liftech, S.A., GMF-Railway Maintenance Services and Gasfomento-Sistemas e Instalações de Gás, S.A. which, by the tax identification numbers, are  much older companies than MNTC and possibly more experienced in terms of the time they have been operating in the market.

The findings of a full investigation are likely to be published within 45 days while MNTC says it is cooperating with the authorities 

“This is a moment of great pain and consternation, and MNTC has, from the beginning, been collaborating with the authorities, so that the causes of the accident can be quickly determined and thereby provide answers to the families of the victims, to whom I express my deepest condolences,” states the statement signed by the company’s lawyer Ricardo Serrano Vieira.

Sources: Público, Jornal de Notícias, Social Media source Muttley@Muttley on X. 

Image: A person looks at the flowers left on the side walk in memory of the victims of the accident of the Gloria lift (funicular) in Lisbon, a popular transportation used by tourists, that derailed in Lisbon, Portugal, September 5, 2025. The accident caused the death to 16 people and also left 5 people seriously injured. The number of deaths was corrected by the civil protection authorities. RODRIGO ANTUNES/LUSA
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