TAP: Coronavirus COVID-19

Impact on TAP operation and business.

TAP's priority, since the coronavirus outbreak, is the protection of the health of its passengers and employees.

Therefore, the Portuguese airline activated, from the beginning of the outbreak, its contingency plan that incorporates all recommendations and procedures determined by national and international health authorities.

In this context, TAP works and cooperates actively with the most important entities, first and foremost, with the Direção-Geral de Saúde from Portugal, but also with the World Health Organization, ECDC, CDC, IATA, ICAO or EASA.

The coronavirus outbreak is affecting the world economy, specially the tourism and air transport sectors.

This strong slowdown in demand implies that TAP will immediately cancel flights with lower demand, reducing capacity by 4 percent in March and 6 percent in April, which represents a total of around 1000 flights.

These cancellations focus especially on operations for cities in the most affected regions, especially Italy, but also include the reduction of supply in other European markets that show greater drops in demand, such as Spain or France, and also include some intercontinental flights, given the model of operation of TAP, as a long-haul and connection airline.

TAP will contact all passengers affected by these cancellations and together with them will find the best options and alternatives for making their trips.

The drop in demand naturally implies a decrease in revenue, so, to protect the integrity of its treasury, TAP has already taken some fundamental decisions, such as the suspension of all non-critical investments, the review and cut of non-essential expenses for the business or the suspension of hiring and new admissions, in addition to adapting supply to demand.