The Angra do Heroísmo Chamber of Commerce (CCAH) wants a parliamentary commission of inquiry to be opened in the Azores Regional Assembly to determine which routes Azores Airlines operates that are the most loss-making.
“The CCAH will request the opening of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the routes operated by Azores AirLines over the last five years, clarifying once and for all and for all Azoreans, which routes are, or were, responsible for the state the company has reached,” said the president of the business association, Marcos Couto, at a press conference in Angra do Heroísmo, adding that “the profitability criteria must be the same for all Azoreans.”
The CCAH’s decision follows the decision announced by Azores Airlines to reduce the Azorean airline’s connections during the next IATA summer between the USA and Terceira, a situation viewed with “enormous dissatisfaction” by businesspeople.
“The justification is always the same and no longer convincing: the profitability of the route,” lamented Marcos Couto, considering that it is “clear that there are strong internal blockages” within the Azorean airline, “which systematically prevent the implementation of new initiatives” that have to do with Terceira.
The president of the CCAH recalled that, over the last five months, he presented Azores Airlines with a project, in partnership with the city of Porto, for six connections between the USA (two Boston, two Toronto, and two New York—JFK) and Porto airport, with a ‘stopover’ in Terceira.

“The project, drawn up by this Chamber of Commerce and with the prompt support of the Porto city tourism office, was worked on over several months and presents an absolutely unique and innovative tourism product, not only for the Azores, but also at national level, and is called ‘Atlantic Heritage & Freedom Cities’, with a specific focus on the North American market for the low season,” explained Marcos Couto.
According to the businessman, “This would be an innovative operation, which would break with the past of operations to Terceira, based on highly expensive and difficult to monetize ‘point to point’ connections, to be based on a ‘stopover’ model, with two destinations, clearly profitable and capable of leveraging the Terceira destination, in partnership with the city of Porto, and through it the islands of the central and western groups of the Azores.”
“After multiple meetings, always with good prospects and recognition of the unique quality of the product, but without any concrete response, we have now been surprised by the company with just one weekly connection,” said Marcos Couto, stressing that “it wasn’t Terceira island, nor the routes operated to and from it, that put the company in the state it is in.”

in Diário Insular – José Lourenço, director

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks Luso Financial for sponsoring NOVIDADES.