TAP CEO slams French airports company Vinci

The CEO of Portugal’s national carrier TAP has launched a barbed attack at the French company which manages Portugal’s airports.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper EL País, Antonoaldo Neves criticised the French company which holds the operation and management concession for Lisbon’s international airport for the solution it had adopted for the airport which did not give preference any of TAP’s flights.
“You can’t give a company’s infrastructure (to a private operator) under a monopoly regime without demanding a series of investments in return,” he said slamming the terms under which the airport was privatised.
Neves stressed that Vinci, which owns ANA (Aeroportos de Portugal) rejected the proposal made by TAP, the company that is responsible for over 50% of all takeoffs and landings at Lisbon’s Humberto Delgado International Airport.
The solution foreseen by Vinci for Lisbon “only gives preference to 20% of flight movements, none of which are ours” Antonoaldo Neves told El Pais.
“Its (Vinci’s) attitude is unfathomable, I believe that this is a group that knew nothing about planes when it arrived here and that in the future it would improve; but you can’t give the infrastructure of a country as a monopoly without demanding a series of investments,” he criticised, recalling the privatisation model agreed in December 2012 by the Pedro Passos Coelho Government for €3Bn.
TAP pays over €100 million per annum to Vinci to use Lisbon Airport according to the Spanish daily newspaper and €6 million for each new aircraft.
ANA began works in January to create to rapid runway exits at Lisbon airport which means that the runway will be closed between 23.30h and 05.30 hours until the end of June.
These rapid exit taxiways will be constructed off the main takeoff runway at Humberto Delgado with completion by March 2021.