The president of TAP says the recent strike has forced him to resize the company.
Fernando Pinto today sent a letter to TAP workers, praising those who worked to minimise the damage of the recent ten day strike but making it clear that he now will start to downsize the company.
"The strike again put us in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons, affecting the company's image and its credibility."
The TAP boss praised those who worked through the strike period "so that our flights remained or, when this was prevented by the strike, that there were adequate alternatives in the shortest amount of time."
According to Pinto, TAP is struggling with structural problems caused by low-cost competition and with strikes.
The president of the airline, which is due to be sold off to one of a dwindling number of suitors, aims to "adjust the company to a size suitable to allow a solid base for reconstruction and the subsequent preparation for a new growth cycle."
Pinto stresses that "this work is indispensable, regardless of the ongoing privatisation process."
The question of why this structural problem at TAP has not already been addressed lies in Pinto’s lap.
Just days before the bids are to be opened, Pinto presides over a strike-torn, debt-ridden business which will struggle to achieve anything near the figure he first thought of when drafted in over a decade ago with one mission, to prepare the airline for sale.
There is little remaining doubt that should the business be sold off, Pinto will not be part of the new management.
It is almost as if the government has allowed TAP to decline just before its planned sale date.
Comments
Not actually a problem.
As any current military transport pilot would only need a few hours familiarisation in the air - and a few days in a simulator and classroom on the ground - to get a 'provisional' conversion licence ?
Always remembering that classic image of the Miners Strikes in Maggie's time. Where a miners picket line was pushing up against an immovable police line - as is done in the UK. Good clean exercise, lads. No one should get hurt.
And one miner was apparently pushed up against his brother in police uniform. Which was odd as his brother was a paratrooper.
A bit less dramatic than at Aljustrel in the Alentejo where the Portuguese Police just machine gunned their protesting miners. Go there and ask!
Pinto is not junior staff. He is paid over 400k a year and the performance (2014 losses) and debt burden (€1 billion +) makes one wonder why he still is in post.
The chance to employ Barbara Cassandri, who set up Go Fly for BA, has gone as she now runs Vueling.
Using normal benchmarks, Pinto should be sacked as his performance has led to the taxpayer being forced to sell a broken airline for ( as Peter Booker points out) little more than the value of its landing slots.
As so often, Ed, you hit the nail on the head. What exactly has Pinto achieved in the last 15 years? Many other major airlines have grasped the particular nettle of low-cost competition years ago, and many of them have low-cost subsidiaries.
And TAP? Unchanging, protected, overstaffed, over unionised, with an aging fleet (noisy too, when they go over here) TAP is heading for the plughole. Very soon its major asset will be the slots it owns at the airports it uses.