The right-wing strategy to privatize SATA will lead to its collapse and inflict a significant blow to the finances of the Azores and air transport in the region, stated the party in a communiqué to the editorial offices.
According to the Azores-based BE, led by António Lima, it is urgent to halt this path to disaster that endangers air transport in the Azores and to start working immediately on a strategy to save SATA and air transport in the archipelago.
The two airlines of the SATA group, Azores Airlines and Sata Air Açores, ended 2024 with an accumulated loss of 82.8 million euros, more than double the previous year, according to data released by the company.
In a statement, SATA revealed that last year, Sata Internacional – Azores Airlines (which operates in and out of the archipelago) recorded a net negative result of 71.2 million euros, compared to a loss of 26.08 million euros in 2023.
Meanwhile, Sata Air Açores (responsible for inter-island connections) reported a net negative result of 11.6 million euros in 2024, as opposed to a loss of 9.97 million euros the previous year.
The accumulated loss of the two companies thus amounted to 82.8 million euros last year, more than double the 36 million reported in 2023.
For BE/Açores, the group’s loss in 2024 is a dramatic situation, revealing the total failure of the Regional Government’s policy, led by the coalition of PSD, CDS, and PPM, with the support of Chega, for the Azorean airline.
The 2024 results are as bad as the worst year of the pandemic when the planes were grounded, it stated.
According to the party, the SATA group is in an extreme situation with its survival at risk.
All this comes after 453 million euros in public aid that the right squandered, it stressed, reminding that it had previously warned of the impending disaster that the Regional Government attempted to conceal.
We warned about the financial engineering involving the registration of 19 million euros in deferred taxes in the 2022 accounts to disguise losses. We warned about the registration of 12 million euros to embellish the 2021 accounts, which should have been registered in 2020, and denounced a ruinous loan contracted with JPMorgan that cost six million euros in just nine months, it was noted.
To improve the group’s financial and economic performance, with particular emphasis on Azores Airlines, the Board of Directors of SATA claims to be executing the Financial Sustainability Plan developed by the group’s management teams.
This plan includes 41 short, medium, and long-term measures – most of them already in execution – which aim to generate a financial impact of 65 million euros through increased revenue, operational efficiency, and the restructuring of support services.
We are convinced that 2024 was, for various reasons, a year of inflection and that 2025 will undoubtedly be a turning point. The improvement of the results obtained in the early months of 2025 indicates that we are on the right path, said the CEO of the SATA group, Rui Coutinho, quoted in the statement.
