The chairman of the board of directors, Ana Major, was speaking at the presentation of TAAG's results in 2022, stressing that the Luanda-Lisbon route "is not to be underestimated", without giving details as it is "competitive data" that she did not intend to share.
For the same reasons, the president of the administration of TAAG declined to answer whether the connection to Porto would be resumed, which since the covid-19 pandemic no longer has direct connecting flights from Luanda, forcing passengers who fly to from Angola to Madrid and take another flight to the city in the North of Portugal.
"The issue of volume is not always noticeable, for those on the other side, the notion of volume that actually justifies the opening of routes. There is a whole rationalization work that is done, for us to determine whether or not we should open a route", said Ana Major.
In turn, TAAG's chief executive, Eduardo Fairen, said that the company has been assessing the performance of routes and new opportunities.
"Porto is one of those destinations that we are considering, we just loaded the Christmas theme into the system, these flights are now available and we are going to see what is the moment, in volume and revenue, that it makes sense to enter one route or another", underlined.
According to Eduardo Fairen, TAAG in its strategic business plan is "attentive" to the volume of revenue generated on a given route, "because flying a route to lose [money] is practically unsustainable".
"The amounts of money that could be lost are enormous and it takes a long time to recover them, so we have pressure on the commercial part to deliver results and to be constantly looking at new routes and seeing if it makes sense to keep them", he said.
Eduardo Fairen stressed that the domestic market "is working very well" and they want to increase their responsiveness, "because demand is very high".
As for the regional markets, the company plans to operate, with the entry into operation of the new international airport in Luanda António Agostinho Neto, between 20 and 25 destinations in Africa.
"And in the intercontinental market, we are growing strongly in the Brazilian market and now with the agreement with Gol this will be reinforced and we have opened a partnership with Iberia to have more than one hundred connections with other destinations in Europe, which we previously did not have through Lisbon", said the CEO of TAAG.
According to Eduardo Fairen, conversations are taking place with more partners in view of the growth and improvement of the company's international credibility: "There is a greater interest in sharing the privileged position that Angola has, not only in the region but also in terms of intercontinental traffic between Asia and America of the South, in particular".
