The executive president of ANA, Thierry Ligonnière, accused SATA of not respecting the slots that have been assigned to it at the Ponta Delgada airport, which causes the accumulation of passengers at certain times of the day.
The statements were made during a hearing in the Assembly of the Republic, at the request of the PSD, for clarifications on the operation at the Lisbon and Porto airports.
In response to questions from congressman Paulo Moniz, from the PSD, about the problems at the João Paulo II Airport, in Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, the airport administrator said that “the lack of respect, on the part of SATA, for the ‘slots’ that were given to that creates a backlog of passengersat certain times of the day.
The so-called “slots” are time slots assigned to airlines at a given airport to take off and land planes.
Asked about the investments in that airport in the Azores, Thierry Ligonnière recalled that SATA has an accumulated debt with ANA more than 11 million euros.
“It was also good that ANA had, at the Ponta Delgada airport, a remuneration for the services it provides”, the manager stressed.
Even so, Ligonnière said that capacity developments are being carried out in this infrastructure, “in order to be able to respond to the needs, especially for boarding gates.”
On June 14, it was announced that SATA had a positive result before interest and taxes and a negative net result of -57.4 million euros in 2021, an improvement of more than 30 million compared to 2020.
On June 7, the European Commission approved a Portuguese state aid to support the restructuring of the airline worth 453.25 million euros in state loans and guarantees.
SATA’s financial difficulties have lasted since at least 2014, when the airline, 100% owned by the Regional Government of the Azores, began to record losses, exacerbated by the effects of the covid-19 pandemic, which had a huge impact on the aviation sector.
Source: Observadora
