Next Thursday, TAP is expected to carry out just over 80 of the 260 flights it normally operates daily. The operation will be heavily impacted by the general strike scheduled for December 11th – the first this decade – but the airline’s chief executive is calm. In a meeting with journalists this Tuesday, in Lisbon, the CEO of TAP stated that he is “not worried about how much the strike will cost” and guarantees that “the customer support team worked tirelessly” to ensure that passengers would be impacted as little as possible by the foreseen constraints.
“We are concerned with ensuring that the operation runs as smoothly as possible, and that passengers do not arrive at the airport to discover that their flight has been cancelled.”
With minimum services guaranteed, the company’s teams spent the last few days rearranging passengers on alternative flights, in the days before or after the strike.. “People want to reach their destinations. In general, it doesn’t make much difference to them to go a day earlier or a day later”, he added.
On the same occasion, Luís Rodrigues was optimistic about the company’s privatization process, which should be completed soon. “We had, in 2012, a first attempt at privatization that didn’t even happen; then, a privatization process, between 2016 and 2019, and that ended as we all know and now we have three of the main European groups looking at it…”, he says by way of justification.
And he also listed the three main reasons why he believes TAP is a good bet for any buyer: “The positioning it has in the South American market, especially in Brazil; the quality of maintenance – as, in fact, was recently proven in the case of what happened with the Airbus; and the quality of the people we have working with us”.
Goodbye, catering e handling?
During the same meeting, Luís Rodrigues said that he still The sale of the shares it holds in Cateringpor and Menzies may be on the table. Although the deadline to execute the company’s restructuring plan is coming to an end – it ends at the end of 2025 – Luís Rodrigues says that nothing prevents the process from starting “and being completed in 2026”.
The hypothesis was raised after being asked by journalists about which assets he would like to see privatized. Stressing that the perimeter of the privatization was defined by the Executive – not including Cateringpor nor the stake in Menzies –, Rodrigues recalled, however, that the sale of these assets was one of the conditions imposed in the negotiation with the European Commission, and is currently included in the restructuring plan.
The manager justified, however, the current scenario, with the fact that “there were no conditions to do everything at the same time”. Remember that TAP is the majority shareholder of Cateringpor, with a 51% stake.
In the case of Menzies, formerly Groundforce, the company went through a judicial recovery process, which culminated in the Menzies group securing the majority of the capital. Now the company could lose its greatest asset: the license to operate at Lisbon airport. When asked whether TAP will ensure the handling If this scenario comes to fruition, the manager is adamant: “we are not considering this at the moment”.
The end of TAP’s restructuring plan, as well as the assessment of compliance with the goals, will, however, be evaluated by the European Commission in a process that involves interactions with the Portuguese State, and which will take place over the next few months. In parallel, candidates for the privatization of TAP will evaluate the company and present proposals accordingly.