SATA was the third-worst airline in terms of punctuality - better only than Canada’s Air Inuit and Argentina’s Tassil Airlines, with just 47 percent of flights arriving on time and 1 percent being cancelled.
TAP was ranked 148th out of the 153 airlines, with 53.8 percent of flights arriving on time and 1.9 percent being cancelled.
In the ranking for April of last year TAP was 81st and SATA 128th
The latest ranking was led by South Korea’s T’way Air, with 99.5 percent of flights arriving on time. The bottom-ranked airline, Air Inuit, saw just 39.2 percent of arrivals on time.
Among other Portugal-based airlines, Aero VIP had 87.6 percent of its flights arriving on time and 1.9 percent cancelled, while Orbest - a unit of Evelop Airlines - had 80 percent of its flights arrive on time and cancelled none.
On 2 April Portugal’s minister of planning and infrastructure, Pedro Marques, said that improved industrial relations at TAP should help the airline stabilise its flight schedules.
On 26 April the company signed a deal that gives pilots a 5 percent salary increase this year and next, 3 percent in 2020 and 1 percent in 2021 and 2022, plus an adjustment for actual inflation.
In practice, that means that this year pilots’ salaries will rise 6.4 percent.
TAP is 50 percent held by the Portuguese state, with the Atlantic Gateway consortium jointly owned by Portuguese transport magnate Humberto Pedrosa and Brazilian-American investor David Neeleman holding 45 percent. The remaining shares are held by TAP employees.