Handling company says TAP owes it €2.5M for night flights

Airport handling company Groundforce said on Thursday that TAP owes it about €2.5 million, relating to invoices from 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, for flights rescheduled for night-time, a debt that the airline does not recognise.

According to the sentence of Groundforce’s insolvency proceedings, requested by TAP, as a creditor, issued by the Judicial Court of the District of Lisbon and to which Lusa had access, the “Defendant [Groundforce] highlighted the existence of a claim on the Plaintiff [TAP] of €2,471,362.24, relating to invoices issued, by the defendant in 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, under the contract for the provision of handling services, for flights rescheduled for night time (between 00:00 and 06:00) – the so-called ‘Night curfew'”.

According to the document, those invoices “have not been paid by the claimant to date, as they do not acknowledge the debt”.

Between July 2017 and December 2018, Groundforce says it billed TAP €1,446,706.29 to assist flights that were not scheduled in ‘night curfew’ hours and ended up being assisted during that period.

In 2019, due to introducing an additional price clause in the agreement between the two companies, Groundforce invoiced TAP €960,347,37, in 2020, it invoiced €50,249,75, and in 2021 it was €14,058,83.

However, according to information provided to the court, TAP believes that Groundforce is “unduly billing the services”, as it considers that the additional price provided for in the agreement between the two companies “only covers rescheduled flights, with slot changes and that fall into night curfew”.

However, the handling company “understands that the reason for the introduction of the clause under appraisal was directly related to the fact that the alteration of the arrival or departure time of flights to ‘night curfew’ implies an increase in costs for the handler, which is forced to alter the planning (of human and material resources), to assist a flight at a time when the number of flights is limited”.

In addition, Groundforce claims that it agreed with TAP that whenever it invoiced the airline more than €80.6 million per year, there would be a sharing of gains between the two, for the difference in the amount invoiced, at 16.6%.

In 2018 and 2019, Groundforce invoiced TAP about €97.1 million and €101.6 million, respectively, “including invoicing for 150% of the turnaround price charged for rescheduling flights for the night curfew period”, and paid about €2.8 million and €3.5 million, as gains of scale.

Groundforce stressed that the rescheduled flights for ‘Night Curfew’ in 2018/2019 accounted for approximately €400,000 of the total credit issued to TAP.

“Although the applicant [TAP] says that it does not accept the invoicing of ‘Night Curfew’, the truth is that the applicant accepted the said gains of stopover and never returned the credit amount corresponding to the gains of stopover deducted from the invoicing of ‘night curfew’,” the document said.

Another issue raised by Groundforce has to do with the pension fund, in which the company tried to raise a surplus of €3 million to pay holiday subsidies to workers at the end of June but did not reach an agreement with the workers to do so.

When Groundforce ceased to be part of TAP, in a demerger process completed in September 2003, the handling company committed to ensuring the payment to workers admitted to TAP S.A. by 31 May 1993 of a supplementary retirement pension.

According to Groundforce, “this pension fund covers only 469 workers”.

“In a report produced by the fund’s management entity, it was concluded that there is overfunding of the pension fund, i.e. the money that the company has channelled every month into the said fund over the years exceeds the present and possible future liabilities for which the fund may be liable concerning these 469 workers,” it said.

On Wednesday, a court in Lisbon ordered the insolvency of Groundforce, after a request by TAP to this effect, in the culmination of more than a year of problems between the company, the workers, the government, and the airline.