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The Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Pedro Nuno Santos, said this Thursday in Parliament that the possibility of strengthening the Portuguese fleet is being studied so that the TAP group can be “competitive with the airlines, specifically Ryanair, Easyjet and Transavia, which are attacking our market ”.
In the Committee on Economy, Innovation, Public Works and Housing, the official said that Portugália has “smaller and cheaper airplanes, which can be used to carry out point-to-point operations.”
“We have a very small Portugália fleet and one possibility that is being studied is to strengthen the Portugália fleet and make point-to-point connections from Porto and Faro,” he said. According to Pedro Nuno Santos, the objective would be “to reconcile TAP with its fleet to carry out intercontinental routes and the connection with Europe and to bet on Portugália as an instrument that allows TAP to better enjoy the airports of Porto and Faro”.
The official also said that four TAP routes were opened from Porto, in response to the challenge that was launched, which are “on average with 46% capacity,” that is, “today they are a loss for TAP.”
Pedro Nuno Santos pointed out that the TAP operation makes the current situation difficult for the Portuguese company in view of the low cost because “it has a large part of its business through the hub, causing the distribution of markets on the other side of the Atlantic that are closed , is reduced to almost nothing. “
“TAP ends up being hit even more than a ‘low cost’ that travels within Europe,” he said, stating that “Ryanair has consciously chosen to burn money, it is the strategy it has and we cannot have it,” he said. still.
The Infrastructure Minister once again defended the decision taken by the Government not to abandon TAP due to its importance in the Portuguese economy.
Pedro Nuno Santos reaffirmed that of the 3.3 billion turnover of the group last year, 80% – 2.6 billion euros – correspond to foreign customers, that is, they are national exports, so if the company were replaced by a foreign company , the remaining 20% of Portuguese customers, 700 million euros, were converted into imports.
Another consequence, he said, has to do with the 1,300 million euros that TAP buys annually from 1,000 national companies, putting as an example 165 million euros in technology, 120 million in services, 65 million in catering and 350 million in services and airport handling .
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