TAP Air Portugal A330 900 takeoff scaled
Lufthansa Group will also make a binding offer on TAP Air Portugal and remains keen to take a minority share in the Portuguese airline. Group CEO Carsten Spohr and CFO Till Streichert confirmed the next step in today’s media call on the Q1 2026 results.
Air France-KLM Group CEO Ben Smith said last week that his airline will prepare a binding offer, to be filed by the end of July or in early August. This follows on the non-binding offers in early April.
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Brazil
“South America is doing very well, notably Brazil. There is a strong economic connection with Germany here, and we could exploit this even more together as TAP, Lufthansa and SWISS. So our interest in TAP is unchanged. German Chancellor Merz stressed the importance of German-Portuguese relations yesterday during a visit. But as you might be aware, we not only look at Portugal because of TAP, but Lufthansa Technik is about to open a new facility there. We are also exploring options in Europe for a new flight academy. So Portugal is for us a potential partner.”
Spohr explained earlier during the Q1 call that Lufthansa Group had grown capacity to South America by 3.7 percent and improved load factors by three percentage points. Yields improved by just 0.4 percent, preceded only by Asia Pacific (2.3 percent).
Till Streichert added: “The current crisis will not last forever. We have made decisions on our strategy. Following up on the non-binding offer, we have been invited to make a binding offer. We are looking forward to the next steps ahead.”
The Portuguese government is offering 44.9 percent of TAP Air Portugal to outside investors. Five percent will be reserved for TAP employees, with the remaining 51.1 percent majority share kept by the state. Following the binding offers, the two candidates will do a deep dive into the financials of TAP. This can take months, so the selection of the preferred bidder is not expected before this summer. After that, the bid must be checked for compliance with European antitrust regulations.
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