Number of TAP flights planned from Porto ‘derisory’
The airline published on Monday its flight plan for the next two months which involves 27 weekly flights in June and 247 in July, the majority being from Lisbon. A decision criticised by the STTAMP.
The Porto Transport Workers Union (STTAMP) on Tuesday classified TAP’s percentage of flights from Porto Airport as “derisory”, considering it a “hard blow” to the region’s economy.
In a statement, he appealed to the municipalities of the North, organizations and companies and other agents of the region to “demonstrate publicly, opposing the position” of the national airline.
“We don’t need to describe the derisory percentage of TAP flights from Porto Airport, taking into account the approximately 250 flights announced for the month of July”, said the union, regretting that TAP “continues to look at the country with the same centralist tendencies” of other institutions.
The airline published on Monday its flight plan for the next two months which involves 27 weekly flights in June and 247 in July, the majority being from Lisbon.
“At a time when a massive injection of capital into the company is being prepared by the ‘Contributing Shareholder’, and when the ‘other’ shareholder, who by the way is the company’s director, is still exempt from this effort, we wonder if this is the model of successful private management. And if this is the management model that will sustain the future of the TAP Group”, stresses the union.
According to STTAMP, “it is incomprehensible that a country that in recent years has had tourism as one of the most important components of its balance of trade, should concentrate its airport operation in the Lisbon region, once again harassing the economy of the Northern region, maintaining the line of musty centralism that Portugal’s history has long recorded”.
“The hundreds of workers” represented by STTAMP and so many others, whose lives depend directly or indirectly on the activity of Porto Airport, “do not accept such discrimination in a peaceful way, especially at a time when the overwhelming majority of these workers, in many cases the two family members, are preparing to extend at least another month on a ‘lay-off’ basis”.
The airline already has the information available on its website, warning that routes may change if circumstances require it.
TAP’s flight plan for July provides for the resumption of direct connections from Porto to Paris, Luxembourg and Madeira.
