Speaking about the airline’s losses, he recalled that "in the last 45 years TAP had two years of positive results".

"It had 43 years of losses and in relation to half-yearly losses, of those who were announced - and who made, in fact, front page titles -, if there had been some search for information for people to know more, they would have realized that five years ago the results were worse than these", he stressed.

Machado was speaking at the 31st National Congress of Hospitality and Tourism, organised by the Association of Hospitality of Portugal (AHP) and which has 450 participants, under the theme "Portugal: Preparing Tomorrow".

He praised all the work done by the private shareholder, the consortium partly owned by David Neeleman, and the fact that this, with only 45 percent of TAP instead of the previous 100 percent, has accepted to reconfigure a strategic plan that 'bears fruit'. However, he said that "the future of TAP is in the hands of the Portuguese state".

TAP recorded accumulated losses of €111 million in the first nine months of this year, which it attributed to "exchange rate variations with no impact on cash flow", according to a statement released on 18 November.

The company recorded almost €120 million in losses in the first six months of the year.

The consolidated operating profit of the group was €129 million in the third quarter of 2019, "equivalent to 12.2 percent of revenues, in line with other similar companies in Europe", the company said.

According to the statement, in 2019, "TAP has already amortised more than €170 million of financial liabilities". In addition, the average maturity of TAP's debt 'doubled in four years, from less than 24 months at the time of privatisation in 2015 to approximately four years at the end of the third quarter of 2019', the company added.