TAP pilots ask to postpone delivery of the restructuring plan –...

The Union of Civil Aviation Pilots (SPAC) wrote to the Government calling for negotiations with Brussels to postpone the presentation of the TAP Restructuring Plan, denouncing that it is based on “completely outdated” market forecasts.

In a message sent on Saturday, December 5, to the associates, to which Lusa had access, reporting the letter sent to the Minister of Infrastructure and Housing, Pedro Nuno Santos, dated November 30, SPAC guarantees that the meeting he had with the company’s management there was a point that “became absolutely clear”: “the entire Plan is based on a forecast of market evolution that is completely out of date”.

“The market evolution projections underlying the Plan date from October 2020, and the recent developments in the Covid-19 pandemic situation are not reflected in them, namely the impact of the discovery of vaccines and vaccination plans that are currently in place in preparation “, writes the union to the minister.

The meeting with TAP’s management, on November 27, had the purpose of presenting some information about the company’s future Restructuring Plan. This plan, prepared by the consulting firm Boston Consulting Group (BCG), within the scope of state support of up to 1,200 million euros, has to be delivered to the European Commission by 10 December.

From the “hurried and little enlightening” meeting, SPAC starts by saying, “the little information provided is clearly insufficient, given the requirements for providing information that result from the Law, neither allowing nor realizing the business model that TAP will develop in the future ; nor assess the necessity and proportionality of the extraordinarily grievous measures announced in relation to the Pilots’ class “.

In view of the above, SPAC considers that the Plan designed “is absurdly restrictive, implying wild cuts in flight personnel, justified by a minimalist projection of fleet use”.

It should be remembered that SPAC had already informed the pilots, after this meeting, that the plan contemplates “salary cuts of at least 25% at TAP – Transportes Aéreos Portugueses, SA, thereby aiming to achieve an annual reduction in the salary mass between 230 to 352 million euros “and that the same process included the” dismissal of 500 pilots “.

In addition, SPAC filed a precautionary measure demanding that more information be provided, namely the grounds for the dismissal of 500 of these professionals.

In the letter sent to Pedro Nuno Santos, the union also recalls that from the beginning “it was clear that the real cause of State aid was, as for the rest of the European aviation sector, the drastic reduction in demand induced by the pandemic – an event extraordinary, unpredictable and irremediable only with internal management measures “.

Thus, they stress that if “the demand forecasts that were the source of the problem are also at the heart of the solution – maintaining an improperly pessimistic forecast reinforces the problem instead of paving the way for a solution”.

The pilots still question how it can be possible – in a context of “extremely accelerated evolution”, with the market that is expected today to be the same as what is expected in 15 days – “accept, quietly, that the fate of TAP is tied to the most negative market scenario that has ever been disclosed – the scenario resulting from the second wave of the pandemic, the scenario before the discovery of vaccines and before the knowledge about the accelerated vaccination plans being implemented in all markets in which TAP operates “.

“In a totally extraordinary situation such as the current one, and being able to use the mechanism of article 107, paragraph 2, point b), of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, how to comply, quietly, with the imposition of the date of 10 December for the delivery of the Plan, definitively renouncing to reflect in the TAP Restructuring Plan the positive market developments that are now beginning to glimpse? “, they insist.

SPAC also guarantees to be aware of the need to find, “together, a path for the company”, admitting sacrifices that are available to share.

“But this is not a presentable Plan, nor is it a debatable Plan – it is an Unacceptable Plan, based on totally distorted market assumptions and that should not be closed without a minimum stabilization of market conditions, or of the market’s evolution scenarios. Thus, we have come to ask you to develop the best letters in order to postpone the presentation of the Plan with the European Commission, allowing the review of the respective market assumptions and the consequent adjustment of the measures to be implemented; and also guaranteeing a comprehensive and serious discussion with the representative structures of its workers “, concludes SPAC in the letter to the minister.