TAP Air Portugal, Chief Executive Officer, Christine Ourmières-Widener at CAPA’s Latin America Aviation & LCCs 2022 summit
Christine Ourmières-Widener, chief executive officer, TAP Air Portugal spoke to CAPA TV on the sidelines of the CAPA Latin America Aviation & LCCs Summit 2022 in Salvador, Brazil. Hear views on the recovery of air travel, the infrastructure problems that have been influencing the recovery path, external pressures such as the rising fuel price and exchange rate fluctuations, the return of capacity and flight frequencies, building a more resilient business, how the Airbus A321LR is bringing a ‘narrow-wide’ network solution, and future aspirations for TAP Air Portugal.
Transcript
Christine Ourmières-Widener:Well, I think, as you say, there are some positive signs. Positive signs is the demand. Our customers want to travel again, and that's good to see. For instance, we are flying more than 90% of the capacity we were flying in 2019. After that, It's bringing challenges, challenges because the infrastructure everywhere and in Europe was not maybe ready for this growth. And that's what has been a little bit difficult to manage during this summer. We also have to face some difficult external factors, the main one being the increase of the fuel and our impact on our P&L. But also fluctuation of exchange rates that are hurting us, such as the position of the dollar today that is impacting our structural costs. So that's the environment. Very good, you know, revenue outlook. We have to watch disruption. Operations are very challenging for everybody. We are following that and also costs that have some external you know, potential factors that could impact them. I think on the trends for us today, from a network perspective, we will reinforce the routes and destinations we have been relaunching. We have today all our destinations have been restored in Brazil, but we still have work to be done on the number of frequencies per route. So that's our top priority and also improving the connecting infrastructure of our banks, of our hubs, making sure— that's one. On network, we are always looking at opportunities, but that's not the main strategic direction. On operation, a lot of work to be done, not only assuming that disruption will not disappear in one day, but how could we be more resilient in managing this type of disruption with, you know, our own organization, but with all stakeholders. Christine, COVID was a very difficult time for TAP. I think that there have been a lot of things that we could speed up because the organization is different now, but I think we need to do a lot. What you're mentioning is already expectation for our customers. They want to see more flexibility, they want to see a wider offer before arriving at the airport, after arriving in the airport is what we are trying to do, but they are very expecting a much better experience too. So we need to improve, we need to innovate, we need to develop solutions, we need to be more also reliable in what we offer, the response time. So there are many things that we are following and still a lot of things we could improve. Amazing experience, great level of flexibility, great feedback from customers and from the crew. I think that the aircraft definitely for our organization is an aircraft that is allowing us— we call that a narrow-wide. So it's not a narrow, it's not a wide, it's a narrow-wide solution. So the flexibility also during disruption to have the capacity to move this aircraft very much compared to others. So it's been an amazing tool, an amazing solution during the crisis. Thank you so much, Christine. Well, I think that we can only try to improve what we have the control on. It's always the same and it's a very complex industry. We have also partners when we arrive in Brazil. We have codeshare with GOL, we have codeshare with Azul. So we also have partners in North America and some of them have the same challenges. We have partners like JetBlue or United. We are a member of Star Alliance. So As you see, it's wider than ourselves because we need to build experience and we need to— we are accountable for the full experience when they are buying a ticket with an airline. I think it's something that you have to accept when you are in the airline industry, that the airline is the brand, it's the face of the experience. So, so me also, as you say, there's a lot of work to be done. So for a lot of years. I think my aspiration is to have continuous improvement in In the offer we give to our customers, better on-time performance, better reliability, restoring the trust that travel is easy and it's not, you know, nobody has to be stressed about it. I think it's something that will need a lot of work because this summer has been quite terrible. So we need to restore this trust. We need also at the same time to work on sustainability because I think it's in parallel. It's not only the operational resilience, but that we are really serious about our sustainability business. So these 2 dimensions will definitely prepare aviation for tomorrow. Thank you.
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