Future of airline saved by State cash injections still unclear
Portugal’s national airline, TAP, achieved its highest ever net profit last year, at €177.3 million, while revenues exceeded €4 billion for the first time, the company has announced.
In a statement released early this morning, the carrier said that the profit represents a strong increase on the previous year, when net profit had totalled €65.3 million.
Quoted in the statement, CEO Luís Rodrigues, said that “the good results for 2023 confirm TAP’s path to recovery in recent years.”
Portugal’s prime minister-designate, Luís Montenegro of the centre-right Social Democratic Party (PSD), has indicated that he favours the privatisation of TAP, which was already being considered for a sale of its shares to investors by the outgoing Socialist government.
The airline that was ‘rescued’ by the State with cash injections of €3.2 billion is however involved in a bitter legal battle with its former CEO, Christine Ourmières Widener, sacked on live television in one of the last government’s more bizarre reactions to media furore sparked by an illegal golden handshake ‘okayed’ by the now secretary-general of the PS party (Pedro Nuno Santos) over Whatsapp.
Ms Ourmières Widener is understood to be suing TAP for around €6 million.
Source material: LUSA
