Has rash of flight cancellations reached peak?

The CEO of Portugal’s national carrier TAP said yesterday that flight cancellations at Portugal’s five main airports had already “peaked”.

Christine Ourmières-Widener put the issue down to a “long list” of problems rather than just one.
“When we look at our expected flights, and all the factors in play, we can see that we’ve already reached the peak. We won’t have to wait for August because our peak began in July. This has affected all airlines, and is down to the slots rule whose regulations and rule made them late”, she said.
Christine Ourmières-Widener was speaking to journalists in São Paulo, Brazil to mark an increase in the number of flights between Porto and São Paulo from two to three flights weekly. TAP has also increased its weekly flights from Porto to Rio de Janeiro to twice a week.
The company is currently operating 140 weekly flights from Porto to various destinations, and is now investing in more flights to cities that are long distance.
The TAP CEO believes that the ‘peak’ will stabilise between now and the winter period, and said the airline was doing all that it could in terms of organisation and resources to improve the situation suffered by passengers at Portugal’s airports, particularly Lisbon.
One of the “long list” Christine Ourmières-Widener referred to got longer on Thursday after the Portuguese Union of Civil Aviation Union called a meeting for 19 July at TAP. The information about the meeting came out the same day in which a court action was taken out by the pilots against TAP.