Conducted by the outgoing government of Passos Coelho, the sale of TAP in 2015 took place amid budgetary pressure and political discord. The Atlantic Gateway consortium, led by David Neeleman and Humberto Pedrosa, acquired 61% of the airline, while the State retained 34%.
Shortly thereafter, under António Costa’s government, the deal structure was modified and public ownership was increased. In 2020, amidst the pandemic’s impact, the State resumed control of TAP, nationalizing the company and injecting 3.2 billion euros in financial support.
Experts view the 2015 process as marked by strategic errors. “It was a rushed privatization, lacking broad public debate and effective safeguarding mechanisms,” stated Maria Baltazar, a professor at ISEC Lisboa.
Former Iberia and PGA manager Rui Quadros remarked that the issue wasn’t privatization itself, but how it was executed. “There was a lack of strategy, long-term vision, and above all, institutional stability,” he said, noting that the government proceeding with the sale was at the end of its term and lacked political consensus, weakening the entire process.
“It was a privatization conducted under fragile conditions, with little protection and no safeguards against future reversals. This was costly for TAP and the country,” added the aeronautics expert.
Operationally, Rui Quadros acknowledges progress with the 2025 operation. The fleet was partially renewed, and TAP strengthened its routes to Brazil and the USA.
There was also some effort to improve service and brand image. However, he noted, “there were criticisms regarding internal management and labor decisions that were later deemed illegal.”
Regarding this week’s newly presented reprivatization model, he emphasized that the government “seems to have learned from those mistakes, structuring a more phased privatization with criteria of national strategic interest and explicit contractual safeguards in the obligations, but with many political messages,” he pointed out.
Maria Baltazar considers that the entry of the Atlantic Gateway consortium in 2015 brought significant changes, such as ordering new Airbus aircraft and reinforcing the Atlantic presence. “Service-level improvements were implemented in an effort to reposition the brand,” noted the aerospace expert.
However, like Rui Quadros, she points to structural errors in the business’s political design. For Maria Baltazar, the State lost strategic control without ensuring special intervention rights, and the private business plan was “overly optimistic.”
SkyExpert founder Pedro Castro was more critical: “The way the Portuguese State behaved institutionally with the private sector was, at the very least, disgraceful.” He believes the central error was haste. “I believe it was election-driven haste, linked to the Troika period,” he argued.
He also criticized the lack of a long-term vision: “TAP’s sole shareholder does not have a strategy for TAP. It’s the State itself, represented by governments that use the airline as an electoral flag.”
Pedro Castro further highlighted that in a sector demanding constant investment, privatization unlocked financial capacity that the State, due to European regulations, could not ensure.
Nonetheless, he lamented that the process was carried out without time to ensure shareholder stability and clear regulation.
All experts agreed on one conclusion: the first TAP privatization failed due to a lack of strategy, political dialogue, and continuity guarantees, and the 2015 errors must not repeat in a new process that aims to be more transparent, robust, and aligned with national interest.
This week, the government initiated the airline’s sale with the approval of the corresponding decree-law in the Council of Ministers, which must still be promulgated by the President of the Republic.
