The reported loss at TAP of €109.6 million is a full €45 million more than last year’s first half performance and reflects the cost of the May pilots strike.
Between January and June this year 'the net result of TAP SA (the aviation business) is a loss of €109.6 million,' reads the report. This figure is 70% worse than last year’s, which was bad enough but who cares, the taxpayer picks up the tab.
"2015 is being influenced by market behavior and the troubled period of the second half of last year," waffled the June report which points the finger of doom at the impact of the ten day pilots strike in May which led to the cancellation of flights and reservations and clearly has hit the bottom line hard.
There was a drop in passenger revenues of 3.6% over the same period, down to €942 million at a time when the carriage of cargo and mail increased by more than 9% to generate €59 million.
By June, despite the rest of the country suffering high taxation levels and static or falling incomes, the wages and salaries bill at TAP had risen 3.5% to €231.4 million reflecting "the unfavorable evolution of fixed remuneration, expenditure on remuneration, pension premiums and other insurances," i.e. there has been little management control over wages and salaries.
TAP clearly is in a flat spin with the unions dictating flight volumes and now, it seems, wages policy.
How the new majority shareholder at Gateway will sort out the mess remains to be seen but anything is better than the current hapless management remaining at the controls under Chief Executive Fernando Pinto.
Those union members keen on disrupting TAP's smooth running might reflect on the losses the taxpayer is shouldering on their behalf.
