TAP Air Portugal: Sustainable Profitability by 2025? — May 2022

Portugal’s national flag carrier, TAP Air Portugal, having had a rough time during the pandemic, is again seeking private capital.

TAP was founded in 1945, privatised in 1953 (albeit with majority state-ownership), and nationalised in 1974 in the wake of the Carnation Revolution that deposed Salazar’s dictatorship of Portugal. Since then it remained state owned but has been up for sale and privatisation on and off for the past 30 years (see Aviation Strategy March 2003, June 2011 and April 2015).